


Liaison

by heliocentrics



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: ...and angst and angst and angst, A world between worlds, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Compliant, Coruscant, Earn your HEA, Eventual Smut, F/M, Force Ghost(s), Hurt/Comfort, Jakku, Mortis (Star Wars), Planet Naboo (Star Wars), Politics, Rakata Prime, Slow Burn, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, budding diplomat rey, minor hades and persephone vibes, morally grey resistance, pain train conductor ben solo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2019-06-09 04:50:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 50,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15259803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heliocentrics/pseuds/heliocentrics
Summary: “In order to facilitate a smooth transition of both groups, a liaison would be assigned to spend six standard months of each year with the First Order’s new government, and then the Resistance’s military outfit, monitoring operations of both to ensure they follow New Republic guidelines. Fortunately, I have already selected the liaison: General Leia’s personal bodyguard.” Kylo Ren’s eyes lifted from the holoscreen again, locking onto Rey’s gaze. Her heart jumped into her throat, her skin getting warm, and she swallowed hard. “Rey.”It's been three months since the Battle on Crait. The Resistance's mad dash for a semblance of safety is interrupted by a call for peace talks by the First Order, summoning Rey, Poe and Leia to Coruscant. However, the Supreme Leader’s surprising request in his drafted armistice may threaten to transform Rey's relationship with the Resistance— and with Kylo Ren himself— for good.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here it is! I've been working on this baby since I saw The Last Jedi, and finally I decided that the time is now to begin uploading. Also big thanks to Becca and Abby for their amazing help with beta'ing this first chapter! Love you my beautiful ballpit babies.

“Ma’am… new peace terms from the First Order have just come in.”

Rey blew a stray piece of hair from her face. “Let me guess— we’re denying their first offer?”

She could hear Threepio pause, joints whirring as he considered what she had just said. She had to turn, momentarily abandoning her place on the balcony of their apartments, to make sure the droid was still there. “…At least, that’s the plan. Or what Leia told me was the plan.”

“Well…” the droid sputters, “General Organa has requested your presence on the roof as soon as possible. The terms will be read in a public hearing, with both sides of the peace negotiations present. This includes the general, the commander… and you.”

 _Public hearing?_ That struck Rey as odd, especially for revised peace terms from the First Order. It had been hard enough to convince General Hux, de facto representative of the First Order in negotiations, to even come to the table. Rey smothered her annoyance, abandoning the ledge of the balcony entirely and returning inside. “Fine. Tell her I’ll be up shortly.”

Since she had arrived on Coruscant two weeks ago, she had spent every waking moment of her free time drinking in the unexpected beauty of the city. After years on the desolate Jakku, always seeing the same handful of faces, the appeal of the city was not lost on her. She had never seen so many people in one place— and all from different walks of life. Every inch of the place was teeming with activity, and she sat at that balcony day in and day out, trying to observe as much of it as she could before the dream ended and she returned to reality. Between that, training, her duties with Leia, and late nights out drinking with Poe, she had certainly kept busy on the capital planet.

Rey stopped by her own quarters to properly dress. The First Order had requested a brief respite from negotiations to address internal organization, giving Rey a day off while Leia and Poe strategized. She had spent most of it meditating outside, letting the noise of the city fall away while she focused on the Force. Before long, though, her concentration would waver, and she went back to the balcony, welcoming the disruption of activity. She still wore her training clothes: gauzy fabric draped over a thick woolen vest and leggings. Her feet were bare, pale toes pressing against the sleek marble floors of the apartments.

In her room, she fished through her closet noncommittally for a dress, swatting aside a spectrum of colors and fabrics before finally grabbing what she had come for: an emerald green gown, made of a soft, sturdy cloth. Even bodyguards and escorts were expected to dress formally when attending the Senate— one of Leia’s rules that Rey had come to detest. But the gown was simple, compared to the other outfits Leia had purchased for her, and ideal for hiding weaponry. She would never admit it to anyone, but part of her loved the gowns decorating her closet, and after years of the scrappy, utilitarian garb of a scavenger on Jakku, the extravagant attire of the Senate was a luxury she found herself happy to get used to.

Rey undressed quickly and tugged on the gown, pulling her arms through sleeves that hugged her wrists. Its neckline draped off of her shoulders, but never truly sat right; after a few minutes of fumbling, Rey gave up, letting it rest where it may. She slid on a nondescript pair of satin slippers and pulled her hair out of their knots, letting it rest in loose waves on her shoulders. Lastly, she grabbed her saberstaff, tucked it into the folds of her skirt, and headed for the door.

Rey ran into Poe in the hallway, heading towards her. “Hey,” he breathed by way of greeting, changing his pace. He looked sharp in traditional Resistance dress blues, creases ironed and medals gleaming on his lapel. “I was just coming to get you; Leia says we need to leave for the Senate chamber, like, _now._ ”

“Well, here I am,” Rey muttered, holding up her skirts as she hurried after Poe. “You look nice, by the way.”

Poe flashed a cheeky smile behind her as they rushed through the halls. “You too. Got your saber on you?”

“Always,” Rey murmured under her breath, loud enough for him to hear, as they rounded a corner, the roof doors in sight. Rey Force-pressed the door’s release button and the pair rushed out into the midday sun before the entrance had fully slid open.

“You’ve _got_ to stop showing off like that,” Poe muttered, and Rey had to smother a grin.

Leia and Threepio were already waiting for them by their ship, a basic T-1 shuttle more suited for realspace than lightspeed. Poe had done his best to paint over the Resistance symbol emblazoned on the ship’s side (only at Leia’s insistence, of course, as she advocated for neutrality in the Senate), but the logo could still be plainly seen, even from a distance.

The four of them piled onto the ship, Threepio bringing up the rear while Poe settled into the pilot’s seat, punching in the coordinates to Coruscant’s governmental offices. Rey sank down next to Leia, who leaned over to adjust the neckline of her gown.

Rey smiled in thanks. “I never can get this one to sit right.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Leia’s fingers twirled around a strand of Rey’s dark hair, giving it a slight curl. “You’d look beautiful in anything.”

Rey rolled her eyes, leaning back against the seats of the shuttle as Poe lifted the ship off the ground. “It doesn’t matter if I look beautiful. The only thing that matters to me is keeping you alive.”

Leia shot her a scrutinizing glance, one eyebrow raised in a way that still felt maternal to Rey. “You and I both know that’s not true.”

She couldn’t hold back a sigh this time. It was a conversation she had had with Leia time and time again since they had landed on Coruscant— if negotiations worked in their favor, Leia and Poe couldn’t support the Resistance’s diplomacy on their own. Commander Dameron was poised to succeed Leia in a military capacity— most likely as the foremost commanding general, but he could secure an admiralship with time— but she had no heir in government. Her seat as New Alderaan’s representative had been empty since her resignation years before, and Leia apparently saw a knack for politics in Rey that could be fostered. Just as Luke had trained her in the ways of the Jedi, Leia was training her-- albeit against Rey's will-- in the ways of diplomacy. Rey often walked into meetings guarding Leia, and came out of them advising her.

“I’m just here as a security detail,” Rey reminded her. “The dresses I wear have nothing to do with that.”

“Never underestimate the importance of appearance,” Leia intoned, ever the patient instructor.

“Uh, General?” Poe interrupted from the cockpit. “I think we've got a problem.”

The ride to Coruscant’s governmental district was a short one— Rey estimated they were probably there already.

“What is it— is our parking space taken?” Leia called in jest, sneaking Rey a wink as she stood. Rey followed her to the cockpit, sneaking a glance through the ship’s solitary viewport, and had to stifle a gasp.

A Resurgent-class Star Destroyer was hovering above the Senate building.

“The _Finalizer_ ,” Rey breathed. It was high enough in the atmosphere of the planet to be out of the way, but was difficult to miss, hovering in the periphery of Rey’s vision even as she focused on the Senate building.

Leia whistled. “Way to make an entrance.” She turned to Rey, a smile dancing on her lips. “What did I say about appearances?”

“I’ll say,” Poe echoed. He directed the shuttle’s flight path towards the building’s hangar, where senators present to arbitrate negotiations were arriving. The holding hangar was large, but mostly abandoned; as the New Republic crumbled, its senators had fled to their homeworlds, seeking security for their people rather than stability of the government they safeguarded. However, a few had braved Coruscant to attempt peace, to secure an end to the war that wreaked havoc on all corners of the galaxy. Rey respected and admired those few.

The shuttle docked at their usual section, near the building’s entrance. A maintenance droid tapped into their comms channel, and Poe granted access with a flick of a switch, shutting the ship down. “Come on. We’ve got a hearing waiting for us.”

As they made their way down the ramp, Threepio tottering behind them, Rey stopped cold in her tracks. “The Force… you can feel it, can’t you, Leia? It’s different here. Different than usual.” She swallowed. “Someone’s here.”

Leia’s brows furrowed as she turned to meet Rey’s eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Could that have anything to do with it?” Poe’s voice was dark, and when Rey looked up, she saw him pointing across the hangar at a jet-black Upsilon-class shuttle. Her stomach sank.

“The Supreme Leader has finally arrived,” Poe muttered, ignoring the tempered silence from the women beside him. “Hux must have messed up in a bad way to-“

“Let’s go,” Rey finally interrupted, storming past the both of them in an attempt to clear her mind of Kylo Ren.

They made their way through the Senate building’s lobby minutes later, assuming the usual stance. Leia, flanked by Rey and Poe, and followed by an uncharacteristically silent C-3PO, was cordially greeting senators and the First Order representatives she had managed to befriend. Rey was smiling and shaking hands with the best of them, but her mind was elsewhere, even as she idly checked for threats against their lives.

She had blocked Kylo Ren out of her mind for months, making it a priority to think about anything but him. It made her angry, now, to realize he still evoked emotion in her. She thought honing her Jedi training over the past few months had wiped any sentiment regarding him away, but now she suspected it had only let those feelings fester. Feelings of fear, then hatred, melting into apprehension, and eventually a faint understanding, even sympathy. But after their battle on board the _Supremacy_ , she decided she was right the first time— Kylo Ren was destined to let his past ruin him, and take anyone down with him along the way. His thirst for power, for control, would never heal the wounds of history, try as he might.

She still remembered their last interaction, over their shared bond— and her shutting the _Falcon_ door on him, leaving him at the base on Crait. Since then he had appeared to her multiple times, at first silent and brooding, but later yelling, shouting at her to say anything, to do anything. She had always ignored him, going about her work as if he wasn't there. Eventually he had stopped appearing at all, but she still felt his presence, the presence of their bond, lingering in the back of her mind. Not gone, just forgotten. Suppressed, by the both of them.

No, there was no room in her heart to care for a man like that.

A bell sounded over the intercom in the lobby, signaling the start of session. “Looks like they’re ready for us,” Leia murmured, just loud enough for the four of them. They made their way inside with the rest of the negotiators and senators.

Once the occupants of the lobby had filtered into the hall, boarding their platforms, the Senate’s presiding chancellor stepped forward on his stationary platform at the dead center of the hall, in full view of everyone present. “We’re all here, it seems; the meeting can begin.”

Leia stood towards the front of their pod, Rey just behind her, with Poe and Threepio lurking towards the back. Most of the platforms were empty, as senators escaping to the safety of their planets were not likely to return to Coruscant anytime soon. The First Order’s diplomatic corps occupied most of the eastern half of the room, filling some of the spare pods. Whereas the Resistance had opted to send a squad of four to represent them in negotiations, the First Order had sent forty agents of their own, each with their own bundle of assistants and droids, and General Hux as the leader of them all. Today, however, Hux stood on a platform removed from the center of the First Order’s bloc, looking more irritable than usual. His usual spot was occupied by a tall, looming man, clothed entirely in black and flanked by a pair of stormtroopers. Rey had to avert her eyes, again shoving down her emotions, but she already knew who it was. _Kylo Ren._

The chancellor cleared his throat. “I'll make this quick to give our speaker as much time as possible. The First Order’s diplomatic team have elected to replace their head in negotiations. Their Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren—“ Rey resisted a shiver, even just at the mention of his name— “has swiftly prepared a set of terms for the Resistance, presented today by him. Supreme Leader, the floor is yours, at your leisure.”

Kylo Ren’s pod zipped forward, soaring above the chancellor, and Rey finally allowed herself to observe him in full. He looked worse from the last time she had seen him; high command had not been kind to him. The scar bisecting his face, the one Rey had given him on Starkiller, marred his features, the bruise still barely blooming under his right eye. He looked pale, more peaked, with dark bags signaling his stress and fatigue contrasting with the pallid white of his skin. His eyes were rimmed with red, jet-black hair unkempt. However, Rey noticed that his hands did not shake, and his pupils stayed trained on the holoscreen in front of him, no doubt displaying the speech he was poised to deliver. Whatever his physical appearance told her, it was clear that Ren was of a strong emotional will, at least in this moment. Rey snuck a glance at Leia, who seemed to be unaffected by the image of her estranged son.

Kylo Ren cleared his throat, and the platform quickly amplified his voice for the entire Senate chamber to hear.

“Here we go,” Poe murmured from the back of their own pod. Rey had to shoot him a scornful look before returning her attention to the chamber, her senses attuned to the scene before her while deftly ignoring her bond with Ren.

“Thank you, Chancellor, for the opportunity to speak today.” His voice was calm, practiced, but that undertone of silent rage, chaos simmering just below the surface, was still present. “As prime representative of the First Order, I have created a set of peace terms for the Resistance—“ at this his gaze briefly flickered over to Leia’s platform, and locked onto Rey’s— “to consider.” His eyes were glued to her now, and she had to steel herself, remind herself not to look away, not to show weakness. Her eyes narrowed, daring him to break their contact, and finally he did, returning to the holoscreen in front of him. The entire exchange lasted only seconds, but she felt it had been hours since he had begun.

“The defining condition of my terms relies on the establishment of a new subset of government, operated by the First Order and beholden to the New Republic. Upon the end of the war, the First Order would limit their rule to a handful of systems in the Unknown Regions, primarily the abandoned Rakata system. Any extension of rule of government beyond this would have to be sanctioned by this Senate. This First Order, this provincial government, will act as a fresh start, a new settlement for those who seek peace and order in the Galaxy.” There was a pointed look at Leia from Ren at that, and Rey could practically hear Poe rolling his eyes as he shifted in place.

“In exchange for limiting power to these systems, the First Order will be represented in the New Republic Senate, with one seat granted per system controlled. We also demand a stronger New Republic, a Senate clean of corruption that our government can be safely and fairly represented on. Misconduct and chaos has plagued this government for too long, to the detriment of the entire galaxy. I can only hope the First Order's induction into the New Republic will help clean it up.”

“These can’t be his only conditions,” Leia murmured to Rey and Poe. “This is too easy, to just cut us loose; it leans too far in our favor for the Order to be happy about this.”

“Oh don’t worry. There’s a ‘but’ coming,” Poe warned, eyes trained on Ren’s platform.

Ren continued speaking. “To avoid any potential conflict between two warring sides, the Resistance would dissolve into the New Republic, acting as a standing militant arm of the government, while the First Order becomes a separate administration— that previously mentioned subset of the New Republic. This rebel group has incited conflict and strife for long enough; acting purely as peacekeepers protecting the New Republic will foster a safer galaxy.”

“He can’t just _dismantle_ the Resistance— that’s an imbalance of power!” Poe’s hushed whisper was stoked with indignant outrage, but he broke off his tirade at a simple wave of Leia’s hand.

“Let him finish.”

“In order to facilitate a smooth transition of both groups, a liaison would be assigned to spend six standard months of each year with the First Order’s new government, and then the Resistance’s military outfit, monitoring operations of both to ensure they follow New Republic guidelines. Fortunately, I have already selected the liaison: General Leia’s personal bodyguard.” Kylo Ren’s eyes lifted from the holoscreen again, locking onto Rey’s gaze. Her heart jumped into her throat, her skin getting warm, and she swallowed hard. “Rey.”

The eyes of every person in the chamber shifted to her, and a wave of murmurs resonated throughout the room, even from the First Order’s bloc. She had to tap into the Force to stay rooted to her spot, to keep herself from running off of their platform, into the lobby and out of the building. Her palms rested on the guard railing, and she pressed the heels of her hands into the cool metal to ground herself. Leia and Poe hardly moved next to her, attempting to maintain that air of aloof indifference to the terms, but she felt both of their eyes gradually slide to her. She couldn’t afford to do anything but keep her breathing steady, her eyes locked on Ren’s, refusing to break his gaze.

Out of nowhere, she felt Kylo tapping into their bond, asking permission for entry into her mind. Shocked more than anything, she slammed down her mental defenses immediately, grounding herself in the Force, keeping solitary in her own self. After another eternity, he turned away.

“This is the essence of our terms. Details of this document have been sent to the offices of presiding senators, as well as representatives of the Resistance. I look forward to negotiating this armistice with the appropriate parties. Chancellor, I yield the floor back to you." As his pod zipped back to its place at the forefront of the First Order's bloc, a wave of chatter began to build, everyone trying to take advantage of the short reprieve in speakers to discuss these revelations before the Chancellor retook the floor.

"That can't be all of it," Poe breathed. “He's gotta be hiding something in the fine print.” His voice— all the sounds around her— felt muffled to Rey, as if all of it was happening far away from her.

"We'll comb through the document when we get back to the apartments," Leia was murmuring, almost as an aside. Rey snapped back to the present when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Are you okay?" She shifted and found Leia's maternal gaze on her, her eyes two pools of pure concern, pure sympathy.

She managed a nod. "Yeah." She was still aware of her surroundings, of all the senators and First Order diplomats sneaking glances at her, and tried to maintain her composure. She still felt Ren's presence, too, either through the Force or sheer proximity. It made her break out in a sweat. "We can talk about it when we get back."

Leia nodded, apparently satisfied, for now, by her answer. “Okay."

Poe sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Well, if it's legitimate, the First Order's rolling over and letting us have the war. Nothing in those terms had any teeth to it. Except for that last part, of course," He added hastily, sneaking a glance at Rey. “All we have to do is sit back and watch them imperialize their own system.”

Leia spoke quietly, maintaining the calm composure of a woman at home in the Senate, used to its flair for dramatics. "We thought we'd be lucky if we came out of this with the New Republic still intact. I didn't even think Hux and the others were taking these talks seriously."

"I don't think Hux had anything to do with _these_ terms," Poe murmured. "Look."

He was right. Even from across the Senate chamber, Rey could see that General Hux was a particular shade of red, rage emanating from his form. "Did _any_ of their diplomatic team know about this?"

Before Poe or Leia could answer, the chancellor, who had re-taken his place at the center of the chamber, cleared his throat, and began to speak. Rey couldn’t bother to listen to him summarizing the plan, asking for speakers. All her mind could focus on, all it could go back to, was Kylo Ren.

Why would he want _her_ as a liaison? Out of everyone in the galaxy, Rey thought she was the absolute person he would want to spend a single minute with, let alone six months of the year. After leaving him on Crait, king of his ashes, she thought she would never earn his forgiveness— a forgiveness she had to train herself not to even consider craving. Guilt had threatened to eat her up inside, but she kept it at bay by reminding herself who Kylo was— a monster. He had killed the rebels, letting them die on those transports to Crait, and before that, his own father. Countless people, a scope of death haunting him like a specter, too big for her to wrap her head around.

What would her role even be? How was she supposed to _facilitate a transition_ of not one, but two military factions into a government and a defense squad? What little she knew of galactic government, she had learned from the people standing next to her over the past month, and even then she still felt out of her element.

Maybe the whole thing was just a trick— she wasn’t supposed to be facilitating anything, and instead would end up as Ren’s plaything, another Force user to toy with until he got bored and did with her what he pleased. The thought of that made her queasy.

Her mind was a tempest, every possible end to her predicament beating around inside her mind. She felt too small, as if the pressure of her thoughts would make her explode. Her fingers were shaking again. Her body was desperate for an outlet to expend all this nervous energy, but the tenets of diplomacy demanded she remain still, and her pride, most of all, commanded her to show strength in the face of her enemies. Even now, as she sorted through her thoughts, she could feel Ren’s piercing gaze on her. She elected not to meet his eyes for fear of another staring match, instead pretending to look captivated by the chancellor’s speech as her mind raced. Eventually, though, the weight of her thoughts threatened to topple her, and all she could think about was leaving.

“Excuse me,” Rey murmured, withdrawing from her position on the platform. She moved slowly, as if her departure was planned and intentional on the part of the Resistance corps, and not a moment of panic.

Leia covertly caught Rey's wrist, her eyes still trained on the chancellor. “You sure you’re alright?” Her mouth barely moved as she spoke.

Rey smiled down at her feet, pretending to fuss with her skirts. “Fine. I just… need to breathe. I’ll meet you both back at the apartments.” With that, she turned, her dress slightly twirling around her at the movement, and left the platform, returning to the chamber’s main entrance halls.

She knew she should probably go straight back to the apartments, where Poe and Leia would be expecting her shortly. Her mind could probably use the rest, and she could think of nothing better than a few hours at her balcony, ruminating on the millions of lives going on below her, none of them existing with the potential fate of the galaxy on their shoulders.

It was tempting. But something else was calling to her, a call she could never deny. She knew exactly where she needed to go.

* * *

 

The Jedi Temple on Coruscant was abandoned, rarely visited by a population who swore it was haunted or cursed. Before it had become the Imperial Palace, under Emperor Palpatine, the temple had housed the Jedi Council. Rey had held a morbid fascination for the building since she had arrived with Leia and Poe on the planet; though Leia claimed its days of utility were long past, Rey still sensed the Force resonating through the structure. _Nothing can protect a power that strong for centuries and not contain remnants of it._

She walked up the steps, letting the rest of her surroundings fall away as she entered the temple. The building was massive, bigger than any downed ship she’d scavenged on Jakku. Four gargantuan pillars decorated the four corners of the building’s roof, with a fifth at its center; they were as dilapidated as the rest of the structure. When she approached the threshold, she pressed a hand against the stone walls, and felt the dormant power pulsing beyond the rock. Rey had been afraid that the Imperial takeover of the temple would have toppled the balance of the Force existing here, but a few decades of the dark side had failed to wipe out millennia of the light. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

The main entrance hall of the Temple was cavernous, seemingly unending from Rey’s position at the front. The hall had once been draped in lavish carpets and tapestries, simple yet impressive adornment for an order of seemingly ascetic Jedi. She imagined the halls bustling with men and women from all walks of life, clad in plain robes with sabers at their hips. Now, though, the temple was in ruins, seemingly annihilated of any beauty or utility by Palpatine’s men after his death. Rey strode towards one of the massive marble columns, pressing the warm skin of her palm to the cool, smooth stone, and closed her eyes.

And then she felt it.

The Force, thrumming through her own body, mingling with the lingering power in the building. She felt unity with the temple, with the power of it. It was overwhelmingly of the light, of good… but there was something else, too.

She snatched her hand away, recognizing the temptation of darkness. Even though she had felt it running through her for only a moment, it quickly overtook her emotions, toppling the calm stability she felt in the light. Unable to center herself, her composure unraveled, and she sank to her knees, feeling the unforgiving hardness of the marble floor even through the fabric of her dress. The question that had pulsed through her mind, the only thing she could think of on the way here, was coming to the forefront now. She had to turn to the only thing she knew she could really trust— her only constant companion.

“What am I going to do?” Her voice was just a whisper, but it reverberated through the hall, the only sound in the building. She felt a wetness on her cheeks, and realized she had started to weep.

The Force responded in kind. She could feel tendrils of energy, of warm power and light, flowing and braiding around her, as if embracing her.

Despite her predicament, the events of the public hearing, she felt safe here, protected. A quiet calm fell over her. The events of the past hour fell away, leaving only herself, her own thoughts and feelings, and the Force.

"I thought I might find you here."

Rey cringed, jumping at the sound of Kylo Ren's voice. Any semblance of peace or calm she had been able to create just moments before quickly dissipated, replaced by that nervous displeasure and dread she had felt in the Senate chamber, with his eyes boring into her.

Discreetly wiping her cheeks, she turned her head to the side, eyes trained on the hem of her skirt. She refused to stand, or even look at him. “Why are you here?”

“Same reason you probably are.” Ren’s voice sounded nonchalant, as if their conversation was mundane. She could even hear his cape sweeping the floor as he paced. This was not just a materialization of their Force bond, she realized; he _was_ here with her. “We’ve both felt the sheer energy of this place, reverberating through the planet.”

“You followed me,” Rey retorted, now fully turning to face him. He was by the door, the same entrance she had come through, just steps from the threshold. At this distance, just feet from her, she could see just how damaged he truly was— the bags under his eyes were exaggerated, skin paler than she had previously thought.

“I didn’t. But believe what you must.”

 _Yes, I think I will._ She knew he had followed her, there was no other explanation for it, but she elected to keep her mouth shut, saving her energy for what was sure to be a long-winded argument between them.

Rey bowed her head again. “…Do you want to talk about it?” She tentatively tried to cut the maliciousness out of her voice, asking a genuine question rather than spitting back an insult. “Crait, the _Supremacy_ , everything that happened—“

“I’d rather not.” Ren’s voice was strained, and Rey switched topics seamlessly, wishing she’d never mentioned it. Truth be told, she hadn’t exactly wanted to discuss it either, but it felt like the dewback in the room, pressing down on their conversation.

She transferred her embarrassed frustration into her next question. “Why _did_ you come, anyways? If what you say is true.” Rey ripped her gaze from his long enough to gesture to the dilapidated opulence of the main hall. “I thought you hated the Jedi.”

Kylo stopped pacing. “I don’t,” He murmured, his eyes passively scanning the hall. “Some part of me admires them.”

“Then why ever forsake the Jedi Order?”

His gaze met hers again, eyes piercing her. “You know why.”

Rey scoffed. “I suppose I just don’t understand the rationale of abandoning an entire way of life just because of one man— one night, one misunderstanding.”

“It’s bigger than that. You can never understand the true power the dark side can give someone when _you_ choose to isolate yourself from it.”

“A choice I gladly make.” Rey was nearly sneering.

The Supreme Leader barked out a harsh laugh that was more of a scoff. “Sure you do.”

The fact that Kylo Ren was finding any humor in this at all incensed Rey even more, and she scrambled to her feet, rage surging from her in waves. “I can’t believe you.” In a moment of impulse, she fished through her skirts for her saberstaff and pulled it out, pointing the hilt at him. Her thumb rested threateningly on the forward emitter. “I should strike you down, here and now, and end this nightmare myself.”

“Ah, there it is.” Kylo’s eyes narrowed, and he took a careful step forward, observing her like a specimen. “That power— untapped, but available. Dormant, but ferocious.”

It took Rey a moment to realize what he was talking about. Then she detached herself from the Force flowing through her, and hastily stashed the weapon back in the folds of her gown, heat warming her cheeks.

“Don’t be ashamed of it, Rey. Embrace it. Let it drive you.”

“Never.”

“Oh, of course.” Ren _tsk_ ed, shrugging in a _too bad_ manner. “I nearly forgot you’re too arrogant to even consider—“

“It’s not arrogance,” Rey had to snap back. “It’s my own sense of right and wrong.”

“I can’t wait to hear all about your staunch morals while we work together over the coming years.” His voice dripped of sarcasm.

Rey tensed. In her anger, her startlement at his sudden appearance, she had almost forgotten about the terms he had read at the Senate. _Almost._

“That’s never going to happen.” She hissed between her teeth.

“What other choice do you have?” Kylo’s voice was not mocking, or vindictive like she might have expected, but realistic, detached, almost empathetic. “If you reject these terms, the First Order will walk away from peace talks, find your band of rebels, and destroy the Resistance once and for all.” He tilted his head, admiring the columns of the temple as he spoke. “The deck is stacked against you. The First Order has all but won this war. Taking this deal is the only chance of survival for you and your friends; rejecting it is certain death.”

 _There has to be another way,_ Rey felt herself wondering.

“There isn’t.” Ren’s voice was quiet.

Rey jumped. “Don’t do that.”

He turned, making eye contact with her again. “Do what?”

“…Read my thoughts. Get into my head.”

Ren scoffed, turning away to pace again. “I wasn’t reading your thoughts; the Force was. They just so happened to project them to me.”

 _The bond._ She chose to direct her attention to his previous point, snarling as she paced towards him.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re crafting,” Rey hissed, stopping in Ren’s path. “But I refuse to play along.”

Kylo Ren only smiled, eyeing her like a parent might view a petulant child. “In time, you’ll see why I had to do this. For now, your petty insolence is a small price to pay.”

“Pay for what?” She was a good six inches shorter than him, and had to stand on the tips of her toes to try and seem intimidating.

She waited for his response, keeping her brow furrowed as her eyes bored into his, but eventually she noticed his gaze drift, down her face and across her lips. Before she could stop herself, she was mirroring the movement, absorbing the fullness of his lips, the tendrils of hair curling around his face, the way the deep red of his scar contrasted with the pale cream of his skin. She watched his eyelashes droop, brown irises darkening as he took her in, blinking, and… was that _lust_ she saw in his eyes?

 _No_ , she thought to herself, physically shaking her head and stepping away. _Stop it. This is not Ben Solo._

Ren stepped away too, though he kept his gaze on her, and never answered her question as he made his way back down the main hallway.

“I’m here to meditate,” He called behind him, almost as an afterthought. “And I don’t like meditating with… _company_. You should go back to your band of rebels. No doubt they’re searching for any loopholes in the terms right now— I should save you the trouble and inform you that there are none.”

Rey caught her emotions before they could wash over her and smothered them until she could speak without her voice shaking. “I was here first. You can’t dismiss me.”

But he was already gone, marching down the hall.

Rey clenched her fists at her sides, trying to control her breathing as she assessed her options. She could stay here, to spite him, but that would mean inviting further interaction with Kylo— which was the last thing she wanted. She opted to return to the apartments— Leia and Poe were probably ready to strategize with her anyways. The thought made her sick, but she was already resigned to her fate. She left the temple, left the shattered semblance of safety the Force had created for her, and made her way back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment/kudos if you liked, or [reblog my tumblr post](https://ahsokatvno.tumblr.com/post/175859760618/liaison-a-post-tlj-fic-in-order-to-facilitate-a) for this chapter. Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We don’t have the luxury of fighting for what we believe in anymore. Now, we have to fight just to survive.” She turned to Rey then, keeping her eyes trained on her as she clasped the younger woman’s hands. “You more than anyone will learn the meaning of that soon enough.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Becca (baldoren on tumblr) for beta'ing this work! ily girl uwu

“We just spoke to the First Order diplomats I’ve managed to maintain contact with,” Leia said. “Apparently, they’re not willing to budge on the liaison clause.”

“What?” A muted part of Rey was confused, but another part she was trying hard to shove down recognized the clarity of the situation, how much sense it made.

“It should be the most flexible part of the terms,” Poe piped in. “But officials are telling us it’s the one part they’re not supposed to be negotiating on. Direct orders from the Supreme Leader himself.”

“Why would he choose _that_ , of all the clauses, to defend?” Leia questioned.

“It’s the Force,” Rey felt herself saying. “It’s because I’m Force-sensitive. That’s why he’s choosing me as the liaison.”

Both Poe and Leia were silent for a beat; Rey couldn’t decide if they were shocked or in disbelief.

“What does your Force sensitivity have to do with the legitimization of an Empire fan club?” Poe spoke up after a moment, not bothering to hide his incredulity.

The more she spoke, the more it all came together in her head. “He told me on Starkiller, when I fought him… that I needed a teacher. Things have changed since then, but… no doubt he’s looking for someone strong in the Force to test his skills with— I’m sure he figured this was his best bet.” Remembering that battle in the snow brought back violent memories. The whole exchange seemed like ages ago, when they were both such different people. So much had changed in such little time.

“The First Order would hardly let Kylo Ren throw away the war just to train a Force-user in the dark side,” Poe retorted, crossing his arms to drive home his point.

“I don’t know,” Leia countered, finger pressed to her chin as the cogs in her mind turned. “Rey is onto something. The Order was headed by Snoke, a powerful dark-sider, before Kylo Ren assumed power. Maybe he’s willing to trade in their advantage in the war to create a new breed of dark siders.” She crossed her arms.

“I will _not_ be molded into a Sith lord, General,” Rey hissed, staunchly defending her own morals. “I can handle being a liaison, but resisting training like that…”

“Leia…” Poe’s voice was careful, trained, but a hint of fatigue and frustration underlined his words. “The Force aside— you know we can’t sign these terms. It goes against everything the Resistance stands for.”

“On the contrary, Commander Dameron.” Leia looked shocked at the response of her protege, insulted he hadn’t reached the same conclusion she had. “We have no other choice _but_ to sign these terms. This is obviously the First Order’s alternative to forcing our surrender. If we say no to them now, they’ll chase us back to our hiding place and snuff us out once and for all.” Leia paused, looking at both Rey and Poe in turn. “We don’t have the luxury of fighting for what we believe in anymore. Now, we have to fight just to survive.” She turned to Rey then, keeping her eyes trained on her as she clasped the younger woman’s hands. “You more than anyone will learn the meaning of that soon enough.”

The general’s words rattled Rey, and she removed her hands and broke eye contact with the Leia then, unable to find the energy to keep pace with their conversation. She felt filled to the brim with a slew of warring emotions, all fighting for control of her mood, but the conflict just seemed to leave her with a sense of numb dread and resignation.

“Rey, I have faith that you can resist the temptation of the dark side, but… if you don’t want to go through with this—“

“No, it’s fine,” She cut Leia off, not wanting to hear the general squabble for a flat excuse to remove her from negotiations. Every time Poe or Leia brought up her hesitation with acquiescing to the terms, she felt that sentiment, that desire to remove herself, grow more and more tangible inside her. “We have no choice; you said it yourself. The terms must be signed.” _If you keep asking me, eventually I’m going to give you an answer you’re not going to like._

Leia sighed, turning back to the both of them. “Make no mistake— the First Order will remain our adversary long after these negotiations end. Now that the war will be coming to an end, the New Republic should return to its former bureaucratic glory, but we’ll have fewer friends in the Senate than we used to. When the First Order becomes a legitimate government, the number of Resistance sympathizers will dwindle quickly.”

“It won’t dwindle— it’ll evaporate,” Poe insisted. “When _we_ become this _farce_ of a peacekeeping regiment, the Senate will see us as little more than their bodyguards. The only support we can hope to gain will come from you, Rey— if you play the cards right, as a liaison between us and the Order, you could elevate our power, our standing in the Galaxy even after these terms are signed.”

Before Rey could respond, Leia shook her finger towards Poe in fervent agreement, as if she were trying to physically capture the commander’s point before it got away. “Poe’s right. The liaison clause is our weakest point going forward, but we have the potential to turn it into our greatest advantage. If the position is as strong as these peace terms make it out to be, then you will be at the epicenter of this new government. At the Supreme Leader’s side, you could obtain valuable intelligence that could prove useful to the Resistance, and the New Republic as a whole. We could even take down the First Order, if their actions are as heinous as we suspect.” Leia nodded, mulling over her own words as she continued, her plan formulating in front of them. “But the key is not tipping any of them off— it’s a delicate balance, surveilling without playing your hand.”

Rey was at a loss. “…I don’t know the first thing about— about any of this. I’ve only just now begun to _understand_ the diplomacy of negotiations, let alone participate in it. With this… I’ll be in over my head. It’ll be all I can do to just stay afloat while I’m with the Order.”

“Don’t worry, Rey. I have faith.” Leia gave her a comforting smile. “If I know anyone who can slip in and out of the First Order’s government without tripping an alarm, it’s you.”

 _So I’m a double agent now,_ Rey concluded sorely.

“We managed to glean some more information from the First Order’s diplomats,” Poe continued carefully, picking up a datapad to read from off the side table. “The liaison position Ren wants to appoint you to lasts a minimum of five years, totaling thirty months with the Resistance, and thirty months with the First Order. Only once you’ve completed the five years will your position be up for renewal, or termination. We have seven days to negotiate before the ceasefire ends, and the First Order goes on the offensive again.”

Rey’s stomach twisted at the details of the terms. _Thirty months…_ When it was presented to her like that, it seemed like she would be housed with the enemy for an eternity. She had barely been with the Resistance for a year; imagining five with the First Order made her ill.

Leia rose her voice again. “Well, then, if we have seven days, we better get to it.”

* * *

 

Once on board the _Finalizer_ , Kylo Ren finally allowed himself to breathe, doffing the stuffy composure of a leader visiting the Senate on diplomatic terms. Even as a child, reluctantly shadowing Senator Organa, he had despised the atmosphere of Coruscant’s governmental sector; the entire district reeked of false niceties that senators were keen to exchange with one another between bouts of empty promises and spineless legislation. Since those days, he had never had a penchant for small talk.

Kylo’s relief, unfortunately, was short-lived. A skittish-looking attendant clad in officer garb approached him just moments after he disembarked from his Upsilon-class shuttle. “Supreme Leader, General Hux is requesting your presence on the bridge.”

 _Of course he is._ “Fine. I’ll be there shortly.” He ran a hand through his hair as he made his way to the lift, desperate to control his thoughts before meeting with his dreaded second-in-command. Hux would no doubt verbally berate him as much as he could without facing physical harm, and Ren had recently been making a vested effort in curbing the general’s attitude.

Hux whirled around before the lift doors had finished opening, obviously expecting Kylo. “Supreme Leader,” The general’s clipped voice resounded through the bridge. “I trust your… _meditation_ on the planet was fruitful.”

Ren made a mental note to remind Hux on the merits of minding his tone around his superior. “It was.” The response was a fib, of course; Rey had clouded his thoughts long after she had departed from the old Jedi temple. His comment to Hux was an aside as he surveyed his bridge. The command center of the _Finalizer_ was mostly empty; since the Star Destroyer was doing little besides burning fuel as it hovered above the federal district, it only needed a handful of commanding officers and engineers to keep it running. “I do hope you weren’t waiting on me.”

“You haven’t kept me from my duties, Supreme Leader,” Hux sneered, not bothering to hide his obvious disdain for his leader. _Perhaps I haven’t left the false niceties on the planet’s surface after all. In fact, I may have inadvertently surrounded myself with them._ “I was hoping we could discuss the terms you so _eloquently_ outlined to the Senate earlier today.”

“On the bridge?” Ren queried, gesturing to the smattering of officers occupying the space. It was a warning, veiled in harmless suggestion. “I figured this was something you would prefer to discuss in private.” _If you test me, I will win, and your humiliation will be on full display to your subordinates._

“If you insist, _sir_.” The honorific had a bite to it, and Kylo had to clench his fists to keep his fingers from Force choking his general. He pushed his fingers into the flesh of his palm, relishing in the discomfort of it, until the leather of his glove creaked under the pressure. Finally, his hand released, and he brushed past Hux as the two made their way out of the bridge and into an adjacent conference room.

The moment the door whirred shut, Hux turned to Kylo, his eyes guarding a mask of displeasure. “If I may speak plainly, Ren, I’m at a loss for words.”

“Then find them.”

Hux didn’t bother hiding his frustrated sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger before continuing. “I’m forced to skip over the glaring oversight that you just _handed_ the war over to the enemy with those terms— and focus on the fact that you drafted and submitted a sweeping outline for a major peace concordance to the New Republic Senate _without consulting high command_.”

“I didn’t think you’d have much of an issue with it. From what I’ve observed, you and the Order’s diplomatic corps have had trouble producing legislation with any significant structure to it. I figured I would speed the process along.”

“Without my assent.” Hux’s voice was flat, eyes narrowed.

 _The general must have a death wish._ “I think you’re forgetting who’s in charge here. I don’t need your _permission_ to do anything.” Kylo had lowered his voice to a menacing rasp, just long enough to see Hux flinch. “Besides, even if I had waited to gain your approval on this, we would have wasted precious time. It was imperative that I released the terms as quickly as possible.”

“I am beginning to suspect that you have hedged me out of negotiations on purpose,” Hux spoke plainly, enunciating every word.

Ren couldn’t resist a sarcastic turn of his lips. “You wound me, General.” He stepped nearer, closing the distance between them by a foot, eyes narrowing for just a fraction of a second. “If I was hedging you out, _trust me_ , you would know.”

**

When he returned to his quarters that night, he felt their bond prickle with unguarded emotion. It was coming from _her_ , he distantly realized; it was Rey.

In his mind, in his oneness with the Force, a stone wall was suddenly falling away, simply disappearing rather than being destroyed. Thoughts flowed out of her mind like rushing water. He felt every fleeting thought, every passing feeling, as strongly as she did. Fatigue, frustration, resignation, and a sea of unending longing— for what, he did not know.

Before it could continue, Ren clamped down even harder on his own mental defenses, blocking out the transmission of Rey’s mind from his own. He knew what he had to do, knew what he was _doing_. There was no room for compassion or sympathy in his mind, in his plan for the future. _If she laments this deal, so be it. It is bigger than her, or me, or the Senate. Bigger than any of us._

No, he couldn’t have the heart to care for someone like her.

* * *

 

The music was blasting, Poe was yelling, and Rey was knocking back another shot of Corellian rum.

She reached up to plug her nose, brow furrowing in disgust as she downed the dregs. Poe slammed his fists on the bar harder now, clapping her on the back, hollering encouraging words at her, _keep going, come on_.

With a puckered grin nothing short of triumphant, she slammed the glass back on the steel countertop, pumping her fist in victory. Poe yelled again, clapping his hands and shaking her shoulders.

“I’m gonna drink you under the table,” Rey snorted, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, revealing a grin. “What is that, the fourth one I’ve had?”

“Oh, it’s no fun to keep track.” Poe waved his hand. “We can figure it out tomorrow during ‘negotiations’.” He used casual air quotes before returning to sloppily nursing his own Corellian rum, and Rey had to resist pushing on the glass bottom while it was up to his face and forcing him to down it.

They were both fully in their cups, and they knew it.

The bar they had been holed up in for the past hour was on the border of the planet’s relatively harmless surface and its unquestionably dangerous underworld. They had initially planned to stay out until they were sure Leia had gone to bed for the evening, in order to avoid having more paperwork pushed on them. They were in the tail end of negotiations, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on the galaxy’s new peace treaty, but there was always work to be done as far as Leia was concerned. Yet, soon enough the night had turned into a last hurrah for their time on Coruscant, saying goodbye to all of their favorite haunts. They knew their time together was waning, even if neither wanted to admit it. To say it out loud would be to breathe life into it, to acknowledge their leaving. _Her_ leaving.

“Hey,” Rey lowered her voice, dipping closer to Poe’s ear so he could hear her over the din. “Watch this.”

Once the bartender had his back turned, tending to a pair of drinkers a ways down the bar, Rey flicked her fingers from underneath the countertop. A carafe of liquid the color of browned sugar— either a brandy or rum, Rey neither knew nor cared— slowly began to remove itself from the rows of liquor and levitate in place. Poe’s eyebrows shot to his hairline, and, after seeing Rey’s fingers, he meant to stop her, but she merely shushed him.

“Hey!” The bartender’s voice broke Rey from her reverie, and the bottle slammed back on the counter with a loud _crack,_ shattering the glass and sending liquor spilling in waves. Poe cursed under his breath, and Rey had to laugh, grabbing his wrist as she hopped down from her seat.

“Come on,” she managed between giggles, “before we get cuffed.”

The air outside was crisp, but not unpleasant; a soft wind lifted strands of Rey’s hair from her shoulders and cheeks. Careless laughter floated from her lips as the two of them ran through the busy city streets; even at this hour, throngs of people were still out, doing all manner of things. Coruscant never slept.

“You are _such_ a show-off.” Poe stopped to hold his stomach, breathing hard from running. “I can’t believe you did that.” Peals of drunken giggling bounced between the two of them until they couldn’t breathe anymore, and had to lean against the wall of a nearby building to catch their breath. Eventually they slid down to sit on the ground, letting the last of their laughter dissipate.

“Well, I guess we should call a shuttle to get us back before Threepio tells on us.” Rey reached into her pocket for her comlink.

“Are you really gonna go with him?” Poe didn’t bother hiding his passive indignance.

“I don’t have a choice.” The response was automated, the same one she’d been given every time either Poe or Leia had questioned her willingness to go forward with the plan. To be honest, she had been deflecting since negotiations began, guarding her reluctance behind a shield of convincing herself that it was her duty. “If I did… maybe things would be different.”

“He’s a monster, Rey.” Poe was looking at her now, as if testing her, ready to gauge her response.

 _Was he?_ It was the first two words that crossed her mind, before she could shut down that train of thought. _No. He is. I can’t afford to think any other way._ "So? I can't imagine calling into question his own character will make these next six months any easier for me. He's killed people, and we have, too. I don't have the luxury of taking sides anymore."

"He murdered his father in cold blood," Poe murmured as if only to himself, shaking his head as his eyes dropped to the ground. "The way I see it, there are only two sides— good and evil. I know which side I'm on— which side we're _both_ on. Which side is he, to you?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is a bit shorter than the last- hopefully this is the shortest one I'll write. I just wanted more of an interlude to explore some of the stuff brought up in 1 before we move on. I promise things will really start to pick up next chapter.  
> Thanks again to everyone who's liked/commented on last week! I can't exaggerate how much it means to get feedback on these works. You all feed me creatively.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another big thank you to my betas Becca and Abby for this chapter (and for letting me pester them every other day for feedback uwu)!

The day the treaty was set to be signed, it rained on Coruscant.

To the Senate’s dismay, the planet’s weather-control systems had happened to malfunction on the same day as the signing of a major document. A faction of politicians had suggested the formal signing date be moved until the systems could be repaired, so as not to dampen the mood of the event, but the Supreme Leader had insisted the newly negotiated terms be signed as soon as possible. In fact, it had only taken a few sessions of formal peace talks regarding the newly introduced terms for the two sides to reach an agreement, and after the final assembly of Resistance and First Order representatives alike, Ren had announced that the treaty, aptly titled the New Concordance, would be signed the following day.

A crowd had gathered to witness the formal end to the war, and the Senate building’s hangar was busier than usual. Poe had to forfeit their usual spot near the lobby doors, opting for a place dangerously close to Kylo Ren’s shuttle. Rey had to avert her eyes, focusing on picking at her cuticles rather than chance witnessing Ren disembark his transport and enter the lobby.

Despite her reluctance to continue the peace negotiations with her name on the proverbial paper, Rey realized now that her day of reckoning was here, and that she was not so resigned to her fate as she had originally thought. She savored every minor interaction she had with her comrades turned friends. Each comforting remark from Leia, or suave grin from Poe, was tinged with melancholy— with the mute recognition that they were nearing their final exchanges before Rey was to be handed off.

She felt— no, she _knew_ , she was saying goodbye.

When the three of them weren't locked into negotiation sessions with the First Order, Leia had hastily schooled Rey into the finer arts of diplomacy. Such a lesson was the secret art of passive observation which allowed one to glean everything while saying nothing. _How to spy._ She had absorbed as much of Leia’s teachings as she could, but Rey still felt like a billfish out of water— and sorely unprepared for the colossal task ahead of her. She wasn't even afforded the luxury of returning to the Resistance hideout to participate in formal reconnaissance training, even to say goodbye, to remind herself of the people she was saving with this. Ren had insisted that as soon as the Concordance was signed, Rey would return to the First Order’s stronghold with him to begin work on the new government. The entire situation made her feel like a prisoner, trapped in a cell of her own making, shipped off to a life of misery with the most terrible person imaginable.

Well, _one of_ the most terrible people imaginable.

This mood persisted long into her final visit to the Senate building, where she mulled over her fate with a glass of Bespin sparkling wine. They were all playing at small talk in the lobby again— some of them better than others— mingling with Senators and First Order diplomats alike, celebrating with one another on a successful set of peace terms. Kylo Ren was, pointedly, nowhere to be found.

Leia, on the other hand, was shaking hands and exchanging smiles with the best of them. General Organa had always seemed most in her element when dealing with First Order diplomats and parrying with her former fellow Senators. Rey tried to imagine herself in the general’s place: helming a militant group turned peacekeeping force. Try as she might, she couldn’t see herself anywhere but on the battlefield, staff in hand, or perhaps in the cockpit of the _Falcon_. Rey hadn’t been able to fathom making the seamless transition from rebel leader to esteemed New Republic Senator, until Poe had reminded her that Leia had been a Princess of Alderaan long before she was ever affiliated with the Rebel Alliance. That had only weakened Rey’s optimism about her new position; it seemed that a political efficacy was innate, something you were born with and could build upon from a young age. In fact, despite her maternal nature, Leia had always been able to detach herself emotionally from a situation at the drop of a hat. The more she watched the General mix and mingle with diplomats and senators, the more she wondered at how she did it— how she could separate Leia the diplomat, from Leia the general, from Leia the mother.

Eventually, her insistence won out, and she sidled up next to Leia, breaking her from her conversation with a fellow diplomat.

“General… might I have a word?”

Leia’s expression instantly morphed from all business to completely personal. “Of course. Excuse me.” She bid farewell to the diplomats in her circle of light conversation, allowing Poe to jump in seamlessly before withdrawing to a more clandestine section of the hall with Rey.

They set up by a window, dripping with rain, displaying the vast expanse of structures and skyscrapers, lines of shuttles interspersed between them. Despite the weather, the city was still alive with activity, everyone going about their lives as if nothing was happening.

_As if nothing was happening._

“What’s going on, Rey?” Leia’s eyes were awash with concern. She reached for Rey’s glass, setting it down on the window ledge before taking her now-empty hand in her own. “You’ve been in a mood since we left the apartments.”

Skirting past her initial thoughts, Rey jumped into the question that had been at the forefront of her mind since Kylo Ren had appeared on Coruscant. “How are you able to just… detach yourself from Kylo? He’s your son—“

“That’s not my son, Rey.” Leia’s hand moved up to tighten on Rey’s bicep. “Ben Solo is gone.”

Rey swallowed, shocked by the general’s words. “But—“

“It might be tempting for you to believe that he’s harbored some semblance of his old self, but I know my son. And my son wouldn’t do what Kylo Ren has done.”

Rey didn’t know how to respond to that. But then the overhead bells began to ring, signaling the start of session. Leia dove back into the crowd to find Poe, with Rey in tow behind her, to begin the signing of the New Concordance.

* * *

Despite the circumstances of the occasion, Kylo Ren was absolutely miserable.

Or maybe it was _because of_ the circumstances. He wasn’t quite sure.

But he knew he wasn’t looking forward to shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with Leia Organa.

He had skipped out on the pre-signing fête— little more than uptight politicians congratulating themselves on being masters of the Galaxy, yes, he had had quite enough of that— especially since he knew his attendance at the official Concordance reception, happening after the signing, was all but mandatory. Instead, he had spent the hour meditating on his shuttle, centering himself before what was sure to be an uncomfortable evening while Hux and his cronies socialized with the senators.

He was beginning to realize that being Supreme Leader did not strip him of the finer annoyances of the First Order. Lower officers still groveled endlessly, and high command still curled their lips at him. He was supremely alone, atop this mountain of death and destruction. All for the sake of a _new Order._

_No. I can’t think like that. This was the right decision; forming the strongest government since the Empire can only help the galaxy as a whole._ Truth be told, Kylo had struggled with the concept of the terms he planned to propose before he had even arrived on Coruscant. This wasn’t a route he would ever foreseen taking, not since joining the First Order all those years ago, but when he considered his options, he reasoned there was no better alternative. His final justification was the endless war that had plagued the galaxy for generations upon generations; if he could at least put a stop to that, wasn’t it all worth it? _And what better excuse than that to upend the customs of the Republic, to create our new kingdom?_

_No._ My _new kingdom._

“Supreme Leader,” One of his lackeys called from the shuttle’s command chair. “I’ve received the memo from General Hux. They’re ready for you.”

_Perfect._ He rose from his seat near the back of the ship, shrugging his cape on. “Lower the bay doors. I’ll be going alone.”

“But, Supreme Leader, an attempt on your life—“

“It’s a Senate, not a battlefield. I can handle myself.”

The lackey, mercifully, kept his mouth shut.

The Senate’s hangar was brimming with ships and devoid of people; everyone was likely already settled in their seats, waiting for his appearance in the chamber. When he approached the lobby, a pair of attendants swung the double doors open for his arrival, bowing their heads.

The walk through the Senate’s halls to his platform was short; Ren had specifically requested Hux’s old pod, the best in the chamber. If this move irritated the general, well, that was an added bonus. He could hear tense chatter resonating through the walls, hundreds of politicians eagerly awaiting the adoption of the seminal peace treaty of their generation. When he finally reached his platform, it was empty, save a mute protocol droid manning the controls.

The chamber was as full as he had seen it on the day he had presented his terms, with every person in the room attuned to his every word. In truth, he had hated any form of undue attention as a child, and growing up had only made it worse. He relied on the dark side to bring him sharpened focus, ignoring the peering eyes of the people around him.

The chancellor was already stationed on his own platform, anchored in the center of the room, his eyes trained on Kylo. He could see Leia Organa on her respective platform towards the opposite side of the room, with Rey standing sullenly towards the back, not bothering to try and hide her emotion.

As he stepped on his own pod, an unmistakable hush fell over the room. He felt eyes on him, not just from the presiding senators, but from his own men, the diplomats Hux had insisted on taking.

The chancellor cleared his throat, eyes staying on Kylo for just a moment too long before he began to speak. “The signing of this New Concordance marks an historic day in our Galaxy's history. For too long, we have squabbled amongst another, wreaking havoc on those unable to raise their own voices. But today, that changes.” His eyes hovered on General Organa, then moved back to Ren, a hint of uncertainty lingering in his gaze. _Even he doesn’t think the Concordance will last_. Armistice after armistice had fallen through, with the rise of the Separatists, then the Rebel Alliance, and the First Order. Formidable enemies come to topple the Galaxy’s semblance of peace. _Well, it ends today._

“General Leia Organa of the Resistance, I would invite you to bring yourself forward.”

On cue, Leia nodded to Threepio, who dislodged their platform from its place in the chamber’s walls. Their pod, containing the general, the droid, Commander Dameron, and Rey, sidled up next to the chancellor’s podium.

“Supreme Leader Kylo Ren of the First Order, I would invite you to bring yourself forward.”

The flimsy protocol droid on his platform didn’t need the command; before Kylo could speak, his pod was zipping towards the center of the room, nearly bumping against the general’s own platform. Without incident, through Ren’s careful maneuvering of the Force, his pod took its place opposite General Organa’s.

The chancellor fiddled with his own control panel, and a second later the text of the Concordance was displayed in a giant hologram above his platform, for all the Senate to see. The document spun slowly in a circle above the chancellor, so the entire room could clearly read it; the text was ornamental, less utilitarian than Kylo would have liked. He chanced a glance at the pod opposite him, initially attempting to glean Leia’s reaction to the agreement in writing, in front of them both, but his eyes instead locked onto Rey. Her face was bathed in blue light from the hologram, her mouth set in a seemingly perpetual frown, lips pursed. Her eyes scanned over the wording of the Concordance with a certain brand of distaste only she could expertly wield. Still, even with her entire face set in an emboldened sneer, Kylo only noticed how _beautiful_ she looked, in a pale rose gown draped around her slender form. Her hair was pulled away from her face, the length of it cascading across one shoulder in waves, with a few curling strands framing her cheeks. Even when pouting through a reading of the Concordance, she was still a vision to him.

Eventually, she must have grown tired of reviewing the document, for she rolled her eyes in disgust and went to turn away. Only when she tore her eyes from the text, they landed on Kylo, and locked onto his gaze. She didn’t back down, either; her distaste seamlessly transferred from the peace terms to him, and her eyes narrowed as if daring him to back down. He immediately felt himself growing flustered— an emotion only ever associated with her anymore— and looked away instinctively, turning his eyes back up to the Concordance.

“This set of terms will cement a long-lasting peace in our Galaxy, for every citizen to enjoy.” The chancellor’s words echoed through the chamber as the hologram turned in place. “General Organa, if you would sign this document.”

After another moment of fiddling on the chancellor’s panel, a second, smaller hologram rose above Leia’s control panel— a simple blue box, with her name printed in text above it, and a horizontal line below. The general grasped a metal pen from the panel and signed inside the box in one quick swoop, looking away as she replaced the writing utensil and pressed a button to make the hologram disappear.

Seconds later, General Organa’s signature materialized on the bottom-left corner of the Concordance, to a wave of awed murmurs. Kylo had to stifle a mirthless laugh. _It’s just a signature._

The chancellor cleared his throat to speak again. “Supreme Leader Ren, if you would sign these terms.”

Seconds later, an identical box, awaiting his signature, hovered above the control panel of his own pod. Without conscious thought, he went through the motions of signing; picking up the pen, swiping his name across the box, pressing the button to send it to the document. Almost instantaneously, his name was presented on the bottom-right of the hologram, right next to Leia’s, for all the Senate to see.

The chancellor let a beat of silence persist between the three platforms, and when no one moved, he pointedly cleared his throat. They all knew what came next, but no one had the guts to initiate it.

After what felt like an eternity, Leia finally stepped to the edge of her platform, and outstretched her hand. Impulsively, Kylo’s whole body tensed, his unease rising, and with it, his rage. The dark side opened itself up to him once more, demanding to be harnessed, but he silently shoved it down with a patient, practiced mind, placating his emotion.

Stepping closer and stretching out his own gloved hand to meet hers (though keeping it lower than shoulder level— there had been a sizable height difference between himself and his mother since adolescence, but he couldn’t think about that now), she closed the distance and clasped his palm in her fingers, shaking his hand without meeting his eyes. His own gaze was trained on his mother— yes, his _mother_ , he obliged, even when his darkness reared its head at the thought— and yet, she could hardly raise her head to look at him. All he saw was a woman who had turned her own heart, banished her only son and let the wolves have him. The thought isolated him and incensed him beyond belief, and he had to break their contact before the feral rumblings of the dark within him could outpace his own control over it.

When their hands separated, and Kylo could finally breathe, he noticed a hole in his own power like a gaping wound— _the Force bond_. When the dark side had escalated within him, his mental defenses must have slipped. It only took one at Rey to confirm what he already suspected— she had felt his anxiety, his rejection, his anger. He shoved that down too, tearing his gaze from her again— any thoughts concerning her could wait until after this was over.

“With the signatures of the leaders of the Resistance and the First Order now affixed to this document, and with the consensus of the Senate, I hereby decree that this New Concordance, signed thirty-four years After the Battle of Yavin, is now the law of the Senate, the New Republic, and the galaxy.” The protocol droid produced a metal gavel, and the chancellor took it, slamming it on his panel once, twice, three times.

The applause in the chamber was tentative at first, as if those in attendance weren’t sure this was an event to be celebrated. Then, slowly, the First Order diplomats began to stand and clap in unison. This spurred the applause of the rest of the Senate, most of whom eventually joined in the ovation. Despite the significance of the moment, Ren suddenly felt sick to his stomach. He yearned to be anywhere but on this platform, in the center of the Senate. All of his childhood insecurities again came rushing back to him— the uncomfortable heat of the spotlight on him, every politician yearning to get a peek at the infamous Senator Organa’s only son. With some effort, he brought himself back to the present, careful to keep his mental defenses up this time, and raised one hand to acknowledge the audience.

Looking for any sort of anchor, anything to keep him upright in this moment, his eyes instinctively turned to Rey. She didn’t return his gaze, though; her eyes were upturned, observing the room around her, all the clapping politicians. He couldn’t quite place the look in her eyes; it was something between awe and disgust. After a moment, he turned away.

* * *

The post-signing reception had been even drearier than the first—with Ren in attendance this time, a dark pall had been cast on the entire event, with politicians attempting delicate conversation that never got farther than a few sentences while they swished drinks around in opulent glasses. Dinner had been even duller, with more awkward moments of silence persisting around the long banquet table than Rey could count. Everyone had pointedly ignored Kylo’s sulking demeanor at the opposite end of the table; he didn’t seem intent on making conversation with anyone, and the rest of the room was content to ignore him. She had politely excused herself from the table before dessert had been served, claiming a need for fresh air, and she hadn’t even remembered the night’s inclement weather before she was in the lobby, facing the viewports, watching rain drizzle down the windows. She had stood there for a moment, allowing herself to wallow in her own misery, before returning to the dining room only to find Kylo Ren gone. Mercifully, she didn’t see him again until the end of the night, when each respective party was slated to return home.

The goodbyes in the hangar, before departing on Ren’s shuttle, had been painful— but she had expected that from the start. Poe had brought her in for a bear hug first, holding her tight, before murmuring in her ear, “If he causes you trouble… you know how to contact us.”

When Rey faced Leia, a thousand different words weighed on her tongue— apologies, pleas to stay, but all of them goodbyes. None of them felt like enough; none of them could spring to their lips and be enough. Eventually, Leia broke the tension, bringing her arms around Rey as the two embraced. Rey was about to close her eyes, lean into the embrace like a daughter would to a mother, when Leia whispered fervently in her ear.

“This drive has the comm sequence you’ll need to send us information. It should only be used in emergencies— unless there’s an imminent threat on Republic space, or your own life is in danger, the rest of the intel can wait six months.”

Rey was confused. “What?”

The older woman pulled away and grasped the younger’s hands in her own, squeezing once before letting go. Her face was serene, as if she had said nothing. “May the Force be with you, Rey.”

When Leia pulled her hands away, there was a small metal disk— barely larger than her fingernail— resting in her palm. She quickly stowed it in the folds of her dress before any of the First Order cronies waiting in the hangar could see, pressing it against her saberstaff so it wouldn’t get lost.

Boarding the _Finalizer_ was less intimidating than she had initially imagined. After a short flight up on the shuttle, they had disembarked in one of the ship’s main hangars. The Star Destroyer was as draconic as one might expect: her time on the _Supremacy—_ and even on the Starkiller base— hadn’t desensitized her to the more severe aspects of the First Order’s unnecessarily gargantuan ships.

Kylo Ren escorted her on the bridge by way of a silent lift ride that eerily reminded her of her time on the _Supremacy_ — _I’ll help you; you will be the one to turn_ — leading them through throngs of spry young officers in starched uniforms, datapads glowing in their hands. Rey waited for him to speak— to introduce officers, describe the bridge, even broach the full laundry list of her duties here— but his silence persisted like a cloud over the pair of them.

That silence finally broke when they reached the viewport at the forefront of the room. Coruscant lay behind them, out of view, and ahead were only the stars.

“This is our galaxy.” Ren murmured, eyes reflecting the blanket of stars in front of them. She wasn’t sure if he was talking about them— her and him— or the entirety of the First Order. She wasn’t even sure if she was meant to have heard him.

“Where are we going?” Rey ventured nervously.

Kylo tore his gaze from the viewport to shoot her a look— as if she had been missing the point entirely. “The Rakata system.” He answered resolutely. “The work begins today.”

As if on cue, the stars began to warp and stretch around them as the _Finalizer_ prepped for light-speed. A nearly imperceptible jolt sent tremors through the bridge as the Star Destroyer leapt into hyperspace.

Rey stood there for a moment, stunned into silence by Ren’s words. As if waiting for a response, and receiving none, Kylo stalked away from the now-illuminated viewport, signaling commands to stay on course as he retreated to the lift.

Rey was left alone on the forefront of the bridge. She knew she should use this to her advantage— perhaps gathering base level information from the formal conversations between officers— but after a moment she caught a sneering Hux out of the corner of her eye, all but glaring at her from his position at an ensign’s workstation. She took the hint and retreated from the room, electing to explore her new quarters— and catch some much needed time alone— rather than stay here.

Kylo was still, apparently, waiting for her by the lifts.

“You know, I can probably find my quarters on my own,” Rey chanced, sidling around him to enter the small chamber.

“Not likely. The _Finalizer_ is one of the largest ships in the Order’s fleet. Just let me take you to them.” Somehow Kylo’s tone had morphed from presumptuous to pleading in a matter of seconds, and Rey allowed herself to give in.

“Fine.”

A few painfully silent moments later, the lift took them to another, quieter floor, where the halls were mostly filled with mouse droids and off-duty stormtroopers. Kylo gently pressed gloved fingers to the small of her back, guiding her forward and to the left. Rey instantly yearned to escape his touch, remind him she was capable of walking without assistance, but once her initial displeasure passed, she allowed him to continue, ignoring the tingling in her stomach at the feel of his hands on her.

The pair of them snaked through the halls of what seemed to be a residential floor of the _Finalizer_ , where most cabin doors were the same identical white-gray, silver numbers printed on placards next to them. The doors seemed to go on forever and ever, slowly fading to a darker and darker gray, until Rey thought she might never find her way back to the lifts the next morning. The longer they walked, the fewer stormtroopers she saw roaming the halls, replaced by officers and generals of a higher and higher rank.

Abruptly, Kylo stopped towards the end of the hall, at a durasteel door a shade of pure black, with gold numbering on the side panels. “Your quarters,” he said by way of explanation, punching in a code on the security datapad next to the door.

Before Rey could react, the door slid open, revealing a small entryway that expanded into her suite.

The entire room was clad in deep shades of black: polished marble floors with veins of white running through the tiles, dark metal walls so shiny Rey could see her own reflection from across the room, dark silk sheets on a black bed frame, fenced in by two end tables made of soft wood painted black. Though the room couldn’t have been larger than Leia’s main apartments on Coruscant, Rey would have bet it was bigger than her AT-AT on Jakku and her quarters on the _Falcon_ combined.

Rey hid her overt surprise behind a snide glance up to him. “Did you pick the color scheme?”

Again, she was met with that simple, unaffected parry of her response. “The refresher is on the back wall— the transparisteel door.” His voice dripped with chilly diffidence, as if showing Rey her quarters was completely unbefitting of his rank. “If you should find anything amiss with your chambers, an attending droid will always be on call here.” Here he gestured to the datapad anchored to the wall in the entryway, where the screen connected her to the ship’s comms channel, as well as maps, directories, and the contact information for the maintenance and attendant droids on duty.

She felt uneasy, standing on the threshold of her cabin; it felt as if taking a step in was admitting defeat, assuming the role Ren wanted her to play. The thought passed quickly enough, though— Rey had to sleep _somewhere_ for the next six months— and she placed the sole of one satin slipper, then the other on the first tile of the entryway, separating her back from his hand in the process.

Carefully, she turned back around to fully face him. “I’m sure protocol dictates that I thank you for this show of hospitality, but don’t assume it will make these coming months any easier for you.”

For the first time in her life, she saw Kylo crack a smile. It was an odd thing to watch— first his lips would tremble, then purse, and eventually one corner of his mouth turned up, then the other. He scoffed, but it was mirthless, and never reached his eyes— more a measure of resignation than any sort of happiness. “I’ve come to expect that nothing is ever easy with you.”

The words stung more than she realized, but when she pouted, an indignant rebuttal already forming on her tongue, he merely turned on a heel and left her there. “Get some sleep. The attendant will fetch you tomorrow morning for landing on Rakata Prime’s surface.”

And, with that, he was gone.

The door sealed shut behind him, eerily reminding Rey of prison doors— leaving her alone in her new home. When she turned around, the size of the place shocked her for the second time, the sheer _emptiness_ of it leaving a strange feeling in her bones. It felt almost selfish, too luxurious, to keep all this space to herself.

She quickly kicked off her slippers by the entryway and wandered barefoot into the main room. She could spot a single silver handle by a crease in the wall that, and when she pulled on it, revealed a closet filled with the same uniform repeated a dozen times: a darker variant of her tunic and leggings, and a few pairs of sturdy-looking boots lined up against the door. Shelved above the rack were a few stacks of dark grey shirts; Rey stood on her toes to reach up and grab one. The closet closed automatically behind her as she walked away, spooking her before she recognized the mechanism.

Shrugging out of the pink gown she had worn to the signing reception, she plopped onto the bed and began the arduous task of pulling the pins from her updo, messy curls falling down to frame her face one by one. She pulled the shirt on over her head— the length of it nearly reaching her knees— and pulled back the dark sheets of the bed, lying back against the headboard.

Once she finally relaxed, sighing against a soft black pillow, the emotions she’d kept at bay all day threatened to overtake her, pelting her like a sandstorm. She was angry at herself for accepting the terms, confused with Leia for the goodbye she’d given, but more than anything, she missed her friends: Finn, Rose, and even Poe, thousands of klicks away.

Rey had grown up with loneliness, knew it like the back of her hand, but she had never felt more alone than she did right now, in a bed that was too big for her, in a room she’d never known, feeling like her days in this prison would never end.

Unbidden, a tear slipped from her eye and trailed down her cheek, creating a dark circle when it hit the pillow. _The first day of forever._

_No,_ another part of her said. _Not forever._

Despite that empty void growing in the pit of her stomach, Rey hoisted herself up onto her elbows, and, using one of her hair pins, reached over to scratch a single vertical line into the shining black metal of the wall behind her end table. Then, after dimming the lights with the datapad on the bed, she collapsed back against the pillows, shut her eyes, and waited for sleep to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is a little later than expected!! I'm planning to update with chapter 4 in about a week or so— it's planned to be a bit longer than the rest, so no guarantees it'll go up on time, and the upload schedule might be changing as the story expands and the chapters inevitably get longer. Please leave me a kudos/comment (or visit me on [tumblr](https://ahsokatvno.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/hmkylo) if you enjoyed this chapter!! Thanks as always for reading.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Kylo would reach behind him, gloved fingers outstretched in an offering of assistance, and Rey would take it, letting him guide her through the savage jungle. She never felt any sort of preconceived notions about what that hand meant, never even lingering on the last time he extended a hand to her, in a burning chamber, a quiet plea on his lips. All she could do was take it, and be comforted by the feeling of warm leather encasing her thin fingers, leading her forward._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks again to Becca (baldoren on tumblr) and Abby (sithben on tumblr) for beta'ing this chapter!!

That night, Ren slept restlessly.

Initially he lay naked in the sheets, unmoving as his eyes traced cracks in the tiles of his ceiling. When he had been a child, meditating on the light side of the Force had always brought him peace and helped him to sleep; now, any sort of meditation only sought to anger him further, and seemed counterproductive to the task altogether.

Eventually, though, sleep took him, though the grasp it had on his mind was weak. His mind drifted in and out of dreams, visions of his parents, of his uncle, of Snoke. Snoke wrapping tendrils of energy, of the Force, around Rey, prostrate and vulnerable in the throne room on the _Supremacy_. Kylo, mere feet away, powerless to stop him.

In some dreams, he spears her through the stomach with the red of his own saber as Snoke laughs. Some part of his mind urges him that none of it is real, that he’s only dreaming, that Snoke is dead. But it doesn’t mean that the feeling of Rey’s cooling skin, her limp body in his arms, isn’t any less real to him when he holds her dying form in his arms. His silent mind prays to any god that will listen, to bring her from the land of dead back into the living, to be here with him.

He starts awake at the end of every dream, the sound of his own screams filling his ears, sweating through the sheets as he trembles. Tonight was no different.

Through the Force, he reached for the datapad on his desk with shaky fingers, summoning it to him. He types out a command for Rey’s attending droid and sends it wordlessly, taking deep breaths to calm himself as he waits for response. When he closed his eyes, he tried his very best to concentrate on _her_ — feeling for her energy through the Force— but before he could pinpoint it, the datapad in his hands _ding_ ed, with a message from Rey’s droid that she was still sound asleep in her quarters, life signs normal.

He breathed out in one long breath, throwing himself back against the pillows and letting the datapad fall from his hands and clatter to the floor. _She’s okay. You’re okay. It was just a dream._

As he felt his breath begin to even out again, eyelids fluttering shut before springing back open, his thoughts drifted back to Rey. The droid hadn’t sent visual confirmation, but Kylo could imagine her wrapped up in those silk sheets, cheek resting against the pillow, as she slept peacefully. He thought of how her dark hair might drape over freckled shoulders, her full lips taking deep, contented breaths. The swell of her breasts, rising and falling. Her legs, long and slender, crossed at the ankle.

Against his will, as his thoughts spiraled, he felt a twinge of arousal take hold of his groin. The more he ignored it, tried to focus on falling asleep again, the worse it got, until finally he could neglect it no more. He reached down and took himself in hand, eyes squeezing shut as he imagined her lips around him, shifting up and down, her dark hair brushing against his thighs.

It didn’t take long, with her swirling through his mind, to reach his climax, a groan strangled through teeth biting lips. He collapsed against the bed for the second time that night, her name whispered on his breath, and let a dreamless sleep take him.

* * *

Rey decided that, although it had been abandoned for centuries— Rakata Prime was more beautiful than any civilized wasteland. _Like Jakku_.

She had disembarked with Ren at his own command, insisting that the Concordance-sanctioned liaison should be present even at the initial surveying process for building the First Order’s new capital. A troupe of high-ranking officers, supplemented with technicians and scientists, had accompanied them on one of the planet’s largest islands. It hadn’t taken long for the pair of them to lose the group at an outcropping of old ruins— Rey had attempted to stick with the officers, but the more Ren wandered, she had no choice but to follow. After a few minutes of walking, they had come across a clearing, carpeted by lush, soft grass and shaded by palm trees. Across the field, a small hill blocked the horizon from view, secluding the area.

“Can’t you feel it— the sheer power here, on this planet?” Ren mused, his eyes sliding over to meet hers.

“No.” Rey pouted, kicking at a stone buried in the grass with her foot. She was still licking her emotional wounds from the Concordance signing the day before. It hadn’t helped waking up in a bed that wasn’t her own, in a room she hardly recognized, and dressing in clothes she had never worn (though, to Ren’s credit, they _were_ curiously similar to the outfit she had arrived in on the _Supremacy_ ). Already she was homesick, and there were still five standard months and twenty-nine days to go.

“There’s a lesson to be learned here, if you look hard enough.”

“You’re not my teacher.” Rey snapped, remembering his initial invitation, when their sabers were crossed, sizzling in the snow on Starkiller.

“Search your feelings— search the energy here, and you’ll feel it.” Kylo continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. Every verbal retort she served him he simply parried, effortlessly, as if he were expecting it.

She held his unflustered gaze, her nose scrunched, eyes narrowed, until reasoning that resisting this simple task was useless. “Fine.” Closing her eyes— but not before directing a warning look at Ren not to try anything while her guard was down— she reached out, finding that calm void inside of her before allowing both light and dark to seep into her being.

She gasped automatically, eyes threatening to flutter open. It was as if a violent wave had crashed through her, laying waste to the constant peace she had mastered through her allegiance with the light. Taken aback, her words were only a whisper. “It’s so—“

“Dark?” Kylo sounded so close, as if he was more a voice in her head rather than standing feet from her. “It permeates through the planet— through the whole system. It’s what has kept this section of the Galaxy alive for so long.”

She felt an angry wetness on her cheeks. Darkness coursed through her, infusing itself through her veins, all the way down to the marrow of her bones. “I can’t stop it— it won’t let me go.” She managed to gasp out.

“You’re fighting it. Let it drive you, empower you. When you resist, the dark side leaves only ruination in its wake. But with it as your ally… you can become unstoppable.”

 _No. I will_ never _turn from the light._ She couldn’t say the words, her body still battling the wave of darkness inside her, but she held onto the sentiment as she fought. Her fists were clenched at her sides, teeth grating against each other in frustration.

Cutting through the Force, through her own internal war, she felt the presence of a hand on her own— Kylo’s gloved fingers had snaked around her fist and clasped her hand. “Embrace it, Rey.” She felt him leaning down to her, closing their difference in height, his words whispered in her ear. Against her better judgment, she clung to that presence, the warmth of his hand permeating through the violent cloud of black her body clashed with. Slowly, as if leaning on that presence for strength, she intertwined her fingers with his, and he didn’t resist, holding fast to her hand.

She saw a flash behind her eyelids as their palms touched, striking through her mind like a bolt of lightning. In that instant, the darkness in her was quelled before rearing its head again the next moment. That window of a moment, though, had shown her a lifetime of circumstances— that feeling of the darkness as a weapon, like a biting sword, a cold hilt under one’s hand, unforgiving but powerful beyond belief.

Rey took a deep breath through her nose, finally pulling back from her connection with the Force before opening her eyes. Kylo’s face was inches from her own, his eyes focused and insistent like those of a careful master.

“That was you.” She said, wresting free her hand from his grip. “The dark side as a weapon— that was your own oneness with the Force. Your own self.”

Kylo’s silent gaze was the only assent she needed.

“How could you do that? The darkness— it’s not something to be manipulated at your will. It’s threatened the welfare of the Galaxy more than once, and—”

“Spare me the contention.” Ren cut her off, turning away from her and back towards the sprawling green. “We both know where our allegiances lie; to dissuade me is a waste of your time here.”

 _This entire ordeal_ _is a waste of my time here._ “Yet you still attempt to convince me that my power lies in darkness.”

“You cannot blame me for attempting to edify you. It’s frustrating, to see you ally yourself with a part of the Force that is so utterly _useless_ in comparison.”

“So what’s your _lesson_ here?” She bit back sarcastically, hastily returning to his original point.

He pivoted seamlessly. “The power of the darkness.” He began to pace slowly, through the green and towards a crested hill directly ahead, and Rey had no choice but to follow as he continued. “For centuries, this planet was the center of the Galaxy, the center of a powerful government sprawling over an uncountable number of systems. It was known as the Infinite Empire.”

Kylo said this with a manner of bravado, but Rey drew a blank. “Never heard of it.”

“Of course you haven’t. The Republic attempted to bury any mention of the Rakata or their regime. It’s been the great secret of the galaxy ever since the Jedi’s power was at its peak.”

“Who are they— the Rakata?” Rey pressed, trying out the word in her mouth.

“The fathers of the Infinite Empire— the first government to control the Galaxy, thousands of years ago.” Ren answered patiently. “They were evil and chaotic at their core, but not truly powerful until an ancient species came across the system and taught the Rakata the ways of the Force. Once they were attuned to it, they used it to begin their empire. In a matter of centuries, they transformed fairly primitive tools into some of the most advanced technology ever documented. They enslaved entire planets, targeting Force-sensitive worlds, stoking the darkness borne from the unending wrath slaves held for their masters.”

“They sound terrible,” Rey muttered.

“They _were_ terrible— terrible, and powerful, and not to be trifled with. And this was their home.” Kylo sounded wistful as he peered out across the horizon.

“If they were so powerful, why aren’t they still around?” Rey questioned. “What brought them down?”

“It was a number of inconsequential things, all building upon each other. The Rakata had been a vicious, cannibalistic species even before they were taught to harness the Force, and their nature was their downfall. Warring factions within the Infinite Empire exploded into civil war, set amidst a backdrop of slave revolt. But eventually, it was a plague that did them in— annihilating the species and even permanently stripping them of their Force sensitivity. Any remaining Rakata returned to their home system, where they devolved back to their most basic form before dying out altogether.”

A shiver ran down Rey’s spine. _I’m standing on the graveyard of one of the most powerful and evil realms in history._

“That’s why there’s so much darkness here— it’s residual, from their Empire,” Rey mused, trying to shake this eerie feeling by focusing on the facts, connecting the dots.

As they spoke, Kylo had begun approaching the hill, trekking through the grass, with Rey following just a beat behind. “Even the passage of time can only _diminish_ the power of the Force, not destroy it— just as you felt the light in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, the darkness of the Infinite Empire still persists on this planet. Particularly in one structure.” Another pause grew between them before he continued. "Nothing can protect a power that strong for centuries and not contain remnants of it.”

Kylo had used the hill as a vantage point. On the other side, perhaps a few hundred meters away, was a sprawling structure, a wide dome with a conical top. It wasn’t particularly tall— more wide than anything— but the building still broke through the horizon and drew attention, the only structure of import in the clearing. She could feel the Force pulsating from it— powerful darkness encompassing and resonating throughout the building.

“The Temple of the Ancients. Where the Rakata housed their power, their oneness with the Force.” Kylo explained, his eyes just as glued to the structure as hers were. “Their most powerful Force users communed here, meditating on the darkness in order to make their Empire stronger. Now…” he trails off.

She waited for his explanation. “Now?”

“Now it’s a shell of a building, as far as our scanners can tell. In truth, the temple has been protected by an impenetrable energy shield that has never been breached, at least in recent memory. Our scanners can’t even place any sort of technology associated with the shield— it’s as if it’s being controlled by something else. I’ve theorized the energy comes from the Force, but it would take the power of two— at least— to breach the shield, and…” He trailed off, his silence filling in what words could not.

“You want me to help you break it.” Rey finished for him. _It could work_. If the shield was as powerful as he claimed, it could be unlocked by their combined power. _And to discover what’s inside..._

She suddenly came to her senses, physically stepping back from Kylo. _Why am I even discussing this with him? He’s just trying to turn me to the dark side._ She checked her mental defenses, ensuring he hadn’t attempted any probes in her mind. “Why should I help you? If we unleash whatever residual darkness lies beyond that shield wall, it will only strengthen the power it has over the planet. If your intentions with the Order’s new government are good, you wouldn’t want that.”

“Why do you assume that power would be a detriment?” Kylo countered; Rey could tell his patience with her was growing thin. “The power residing within that temple could revitalize this planet, return it to its former glory. Your Jedi allegiances are clouding your vision.”

“They’re not.” Rey staunchly defended herself. “I don’t have— there’s no—“ She stumbled over her words, trying to defeat his point.

He stopped her with a wave of his hand. “I want you to come around to this, but if you won’t, there’s no use pressing it further. The temple _will_ be unlocked, with or without your help.”

Rey was stunned by his apparent lack of abrasion. _This isn’t the Kylo Ren I know._ She watched him carefully as his eyes combed over the structure in front of him. _There has to be an ulterior motive here. If he won’t force me to do his bidding…_

 _No._ She shook her head, physically attempting to clear her mind of any doubts or conspiracies. “I won’t be helping you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I have official, treaty-sanctioned duties here. Those _attendants_ of yours need supervision, don’t they?”

“Rey—” Kylo started, but she didn’t stick around long enough to listen to him try and explain his way out of this. She turned back the way they came and marched out of the clearing, away from the structure.

 _Who does he think he is— forcing my hand in bringing me here, giving me that grotesque history of an Empire long gone?_ She had gotten quite good at handling her temper— years of dealing with a man like Unkar Plutt will teach you that— but something inside her ignored that instinct to behave, and she found herself tearing at trees and shrubs as she trekked back through the forest, towards the camp the attendants joining them had set up. _I shouldn’t have gone with him. I should have protested more. Leia gave me so many outs; I should have taken one of them while I still had the chance._ She was so lost in the cloud of her own thoughts, she barely paid any thought to minding her errant path back to the main camp.

That was, of course, until a hooded figure leapt out from the bushes brandishing a spear.

Rey swallowed a scream, jumping back before the spear could come near her. The figure was shorter and smaller than her, their face obscured from view, but the spear in their hands looked lethal. They didn’t give Rey another moment of pause before they planned their second strike, which she narrowly dodged. Coming to her senses, she reached down to unclip her saber from her uniform, brandishing it as a warning. “Stay away!”

Her opponent merely paused their advance, cocked their head at the weapon she had pulled forward, and redoubled their efforts, spearhead aiming at Rey as they ran forward.

“No!” Rey screamed, thumbing the front activator. On cue, the left blade on her saberstaff sprung from its emitter, blanketing the surrounding trees in a cool shade of sapphire. It took only a moment for her to assume a fighting stance, and when the figure was in range, she twisted the weapon around her hands, slicing her opponent’s spear clean in two as he passed. She spun round to face his second offense, and—

The figure was gone.

Rey whipped around again, cautious not to be taken by surprise, but was met only with the forest. She twirled her saber and reached out with the Force, warily searching for any signs of life around her. Squeezing her eyes shut, concentrating on the landscape around her, she could feel— _something,_ something dark, coming in from her right, and—

Before she could think twice, Rey spun around to face her adversary as it approached her, and clashed sabers with—

Kylo Ren.

His face was inches from hers, their locked blades painting his skin shades of bright blue and angry red. At first, his brown eyes had been alight with rage, preparing for a fight, but as he took in his opponent— he seemed to be as taken aback as she was— his brow first furrowed in confusion, then softened in a mute relief that reached his eyes.

Kylo leaned back, but didn’t move his saber from its position, resting against her own. “I heard screams.” His voice was raw, vulnerable.

Suddenly embarrassed, Rey pulled back, extinguishing her saber. “Sorry, I— I thought you were someone else. I was, ah—”

“Attacked?” Kylo finished, finally extinguishing his own saber and placing it back on the clip by his belt. Rey only nodded in response, keeping her eyes glued to the forest floor.

“That was my fear. A unit of technicians reported an attack a few klicks south of the main camp just minutes ago, from a group of what they’ve only described as ‘insurgents’. I don’t think we’re alone on this planet.” When Rey looked back up, Kylo’s eyes were to the horizon, as if he could glance above the tree line and see exactly where the attackers had gone.

“It was just one person— that was all I could see.” Rey tried to explain. “Once they saw I was armed, they ran away. I just turned around and they were gone.”

“We’ll have to return to base,” Ren said in response. “We’re at risk here, especially without a security detail. Come on.”

They set out towards the base camp the same way they’d came, both of them keeping their hands close to their sabers in case something else jumped out at them. Rey felt herself sticking closer to Kylo than she had before, hunching down behind his hulking form as they waded through the bushes and under the trees. A few times before they made it back to camp, the two of them would jump at the sound of leaves rustling, only to have a small animal run underfoot on the path they had trekked. More than once, she felt her skin brush against Kylo’s clothing, her hand even coming up to brush his for security— for comfort, though she would never admit that to him— and his fingers would snake around hers, holding her tightly to him.

After what felt like an eternity, Kylo whispered behind him, “We’re coming up on it.” Moments later, the canopy of trees cleared, and the main camp that the low-ranking officers had begun to set up that morning was spread out before them in an artificial clearing.

Rey exhaled, hand leaving its position on her clipped saber, and made her way past the tree line and into the camp behind Kylo. A group of officers— with blasters in hand, Rey noted— flocked to meet them at the base’s edge.

“Supreme Leader, we heard of the attack south of camp and we— we thought something might have happened to you in the forest.” A man with skin so pale Rey could see his veins began to speak, bowing his head in deference to Ren as he explained the situation. “I just approved a patrol to be sent out, but— it seems they’ll be no need of that.”

Kylo waved off the man with a gesture of his hand. “Are we still in danger?”

Another officer— this one with small eyes and mousy brown hair falling down from his cap— stepped forward to answer his superior. “Negative, sir. Though the group was attacked, our base camp was never even approached.”

“Any casualties?”

“One dead, and another of the assistants severely wounded. We’ve already sent them back up to the Finalizer on an emergency shuttle.”

“Fine. We’ll pack up and return to the ship for the day. Ensign, make preparations for a unit of stormtroopers to join us tomorrow. It seems that we’ll be needing a security detail after all.”

Rey had mutely been listening to Kylo conduct business, not bothering to chime in, as she observed the faces around her. Most of the scientists and technicians down at the camp were seated around crates of equipment, looking slightly stunned but otherwise okay. _They’re telling the truth. No attack here._

“I am glad, Supreme Leader, that your _liaison_ was not harmed as well. It would be a shame to have a sign of peace sullied in this way mere hours after their assignment.” She heard one of the officers say. She met his eyes— cold and the color of ice— and bit back a sneer.

“Yes,” Kylo replied, keeping his gaze on Rey. “We were… fortunate.” The hidden slight had apparently gone over his head.

Less than an hour later, the camp had been mostly secured for the day, and the group of them docked back on the _Finalizer_ without incident. Before Rey returned to her quarters for the evening, trying to imagine how she would fill the extra time, Kylo strode up beside her, walking in step.

“I’m surprised your saber forms were as sharp as they were out there. I’d imagine there’s few people you could practice with in the Resistance.”

Rey connected the dots before he could go further. “I _won’t_ train with you.”

But when she turned to see his reaction, he was already gone, down the hall and towards the bridge.

* * *

The next few weeks passed with an indelible slowness, a pace that Rey both found familiar and completely alien. She found herself completely unsure of her place in the First Order, as _liaison_ between these two sides. The divide between herself and any other officer, any other _member_ of the Order save Kylo, was so foreign to her that her only safety was to collapse in on herself, stick to the only thing she knew.

And yet, in that slowness, she found the one constant she had clung to in her life: routine.

Every morning, an attendant droid would let itself into her suite, bearing breakfast and a reminder to be ready for departure to land in one standard hour. She would eat hungrily in bed— a luxury she had never had on Jakku— use the ‘fresher, dress, and meditate until Kylo would come to her door and escort her to the shuttle that would take them to Rakata Prime’s surface. A slew of scientists and experts would accompany them, studying the planet’s wildlife and fervently discussing development plans. Through it all, Rey found no other recourse but to stick by Kylo, following him like a shadow and regretting it anytime she strayed too far. When they returned back to the _Finalizer_ — always floating on the horizon, out of the corner of her eye— she would have a quick dinner, change out of her standard-issue uniform, notch another mark into the black metal plating of her bedpost, and fall asleep, her mind filling with dreams of returning to the Resistance— to her family.

She would never admit it to Kylo, but in truth, she savored the sticky-sweet humidity of Rakata Prime, the way that the lush grass would crumple under her soft-toed boots as she followed him through the greenery. It was in stark contrast to sand trapped in her boots, sun glaring down on her neck, the way her life had been on Jakku. Though many complained of the humidity on Rakata Prime, Rey savored it, drinking in before she had to return to the dry, recycled air on board the _Finalizer_ each night.

The Supreme Leader spent most of his days on the planet surveying over the work his attendants completed, flipping carefully through plans on datapads presented to him, but on more than one occasion, he would wave away his inferiors, demanding that they refer to Hux instead, and beckon Rey to follow as he trampled through the wilderness of the planet, patches of land undeveloped and untouched by sentient life for centuries.

Sometimes, when the overgrowth of the surface would become so intense it bordered on hostile— vines snaking through footpaths and trees bearing down on them— Kylo would reach behind him, gloved fingers outstretched in an offering of assistance, and Rey would take it, letting him guide her through the savage jungle. She never felt any sort of preconceived notions about what that hand meant, never even lingering on the last time he extended a hand to her, in a burning chamber, a quiet plea on his lips. All she could do was take it, and be comforted by the feeling of warm leather encasing her thin fingers, leading her forward.

When they would meditate, in the thickness of the jungle or the occasional clearing, it was always on the darkness, and never the light. Try as Rey might to break through that thick fog, searching desperately for some semblance of light to focus on, to surround herself in, it was always shut out by that ever-present shadow, oppressive and cloying in nature.

And then she would reach out to Ren, mere feet away from her, meditating on that same Force. He was easy enough to feel, tendrils of nervous energy snaking towards her, unbidden. She _felt_ his Force, felt the darkness he held onto, but instead of wielding it like a weapon, as she had expected, Kylo clung to it like a drowning man, a buoy in a black sea of unending torment. He was lost, alone, and utterly afraid. Rey would reach out to him without question, and let her own Force bind with his for a brief, placid moment. It was on instinct, as if they weren’t on opposite sides of a dying yet eternal war, as if to give him a moment of her compassion and light were the most natural thing in the galaxy.

Ren never resisted.

* * *

One day, while they hovered on the edge of the Order’s main camp, Kylo managed to break through the reverie of her routine.

“Have dinner with me tonight.”

Rey turned to him in a flurry of movement, visibly shocked. “What?”

“You’ve been taking dinner alone in your quarters, haven’t you?” Kylo probed. “As Supreme Leader, it would be negligent of me to ignore my supervising liaison. I want to know how you think the progress is going on construction of the Order’s future capital.”

 _If you really asked me,_ Rey thought to herself, _you really wouldn’t like it._ In truth, though, she probably couldn’t turn his offer down; no doubt there was some clause that kept her from denying dinner invitations from a faction’s leader. “Fine.”

“Perfect,” Kylo replied, a hint of relief apparent in his voice. _Did he really expect me to reject him?_ “I’ll meet you at your quarters an hour after we return to the _Finalizer_. We can dine in my private chambers.”

 _Private chambers?_ “It’s… just dinner, though. Nothing else,” she rushed to clarify.

“Dinner in an entirely professional capacity,” Kylo responded, his lips pursed in a tight line. “But you’ll wear something… nice. I want to show you the best the Order has to offer.”

Rey hid her abject shock behind a glance down at her uniform. “This is all I have.”

“I’ve ordered an attendant on board to deliver a stock of gowns to your rooms. You’ll have a variety to pick from, and a stylist is also available to attend to you, if you so choose—”

Rey cut him off with a wave of her hand. “No, thank you. A gown is plenty for me to work with.”

She tried to ignore the twitch at the corner of his lips, what could almost be a smile; it had been the only sign of warmth to seep into their conversation. “Then it’s settled. I’ll see you tonight.” Before she could say anything in response, Kylo turned with a flourish of his cape and stalked off to the opposite side of camp, where a group of lower-ranking generals had been poring over datapads on the planet’s geological information with a nervous-looking scientist.

Rey allowed herself the luxury of staring after him for a moment, keeping her eyes low as she considered his words. _Professional capacity. Stock of gowns. It’s settled._ Since the scuffle with insurgent forces on the planet, Rey had not been immune to the growing tension between them; although the Concordance bound them by law to work together, she could tell neither of them truly enjoyed it. The divide between them had erupted into a violent chasm over the past few days, with snide comments threatening to blow up into shouting matches. Even the most insignificant word or action from Kylo would send Rey over the edge, forcing her to storm off until her nerves cooled. She had never felt this angry or irritated in her life, and usually blamed it on adjusting to her new position or her proximity to the Supreme Leader.

Yet this offer of _dinner_ — seemingly an olive branch extended to her— ostensibly counteracted that divide between them, and Rey found it easier to accept his offer out of kindness rather than refuse it out of pure spite. Besides, she _was_ the liaison between the First Order and the Resistance. It was time she began to act the part.

Which reminded her of another role she had sworn to play, another promise she had to fulfill.

Before she stalked back into the camp, she reached into her pockets, pressing her thumb against the hard metal corner of an encoding disk she had managed to pilfer from camp a few days ago and wipe clean with her own datapad from her quarters. She had been tasked with gathering information the Resistance could use, and it was past time she started.

Striding back into the throngs of the base, she crossed her arms over her torso, walking slowly with her eyes grazing over the activity between tents and stations. Anyone giving her a passing glance would simply think she was fulfilling her duties as liaison. Kylo was keeping busy across the clearing, his eyes scanning across a set of files a high-ranking general had presented him with. Her own side, however, was mostly empty, save a cluster of technicians poring over a set of datapads. At that moment, an officer— lieutenant, Rey surmised, if she had interpreted the pins on his uniform correctly— strode by, discarding a datapad on a stack of crates as he outlined a set of orders to the technicians stationed there. Seconds later, the group of them headed off towards the heart of camp, leaving Rey unaccompanied.

Rey had to work quickly if she wanted to pull this off unnoticed, and she couldn’t seem to muster the patience to craft an explanation if she got caught. Practicing that same supervisory glance as she strode forward, she inched towards the datapad at a lazy pace, careful not to incite any suspicious looks from across camp, when she was close enough— and had double-checked that no one was watching her— she quickly crossed the distance, swiped the datapad, and crouched down to hide behind the crates.

The disk was already in her hand by the time her knees had touched the ground. She plugged the metal into one of the datapad’s ports and let the security workaround she had installed operate. Moments later, the pad was unlocked to her, and she scanned through the files with ease.

Most of the information was what she had expected to find— fleet movements over the coming months, reconnaissance information on the Resistance and other groups the First Order had deemed an enemy, a folder on the liaison clause of the Concordance that Rey knew better than to peek at. She was just about to copy and download the system’s drive to her disk when a certain file caught her eye.

_CLASSIFIED:ORDER_INITIATIVE_

She paused. None of the other files had been denoted with any sort of requisite security clearance. Hesitantly, with another nervous look behind her, she opened the file, hoping it didn’t require a passcode.

Suprisingly, the entirety of the file was at her disposal moments later.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she scanned through the document quickly, ensuring she had the file in its entirety—

Her breath caught in her throat.

First she saw blueprints, plans for future ships and equipment, technology to speed along the process of urban planet development. She skimmed across a list of systems, planets for future conquest, planets at risk for government, intelligence missions speeding that process along. Plans for a military draft of vulnerable Outer Rim worlds, lists of First Order sympathizers in core worlds and positions of power.

This was the First Order’s blueprint for dominating the galaxy.

It was a gold mine of information for the Resistance.

And a death sentence for the First Order.

Coming back to her senses, she switched back over to the disk interface and entered the command to copy the system memory onto the encoder. It took barely more than a minute before the task was completed, and she pulled the disk from its port on the datapad, stowing it back in the pocket of her uniform. Leaving the datapad on the crate where she had found it, she felt her palms begin to sweat, her fingers begin to tremble. Rey may have just swiped one of the most incriminating pieces of information that the First Order had on file. It could buy the Resistance loads of time, of preparation to fight back, if the conflict came to blows again.

So why did she feel so guilty?

She shook her head as she returned to making rounds of the camp. _Just forget about the file, about the disk, until you return to the Resistance. It won’t matter until then._ And with each step she took, the more she forced the memory of that datapad, of that information, from her head, her thoughts refocusing on the officers in front of her.

During a passing glance across the camp’s perimeter, she caught Kylo’s eye. He was still standing with the general, perusing the same set of files. When their gazes crossed, she bit her lip, careful not to wear her emotions on her sleeve. His brow furrowed, if only for an instant, asking her what’s wrong without saying a word. She could only avert her eyes, gaze glued to the grass beneath her feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're finally getting into EU end notes territory!! (Some articles may lead into potential spoiler territory for future chapters, but if you'd like some more background information on the setting feel free to explore)  
> [Rakata Prime](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lehon) (called Lehon in EU, but RP in this universe lol)  
> [Infinite Empire](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Infinite_Empire)  
> [Rakata species](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rakata)
> 
> I really hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, now that the wheels are finally starting to turn!! Unfortunately, next week's chapter may take twice as long to upload, as I'm currently in the middle of moving out of my apartment and finishing a separate work for RFFA due this week. Hopefully I can get chapter 5 uploaded two weeks from now, at the latest; thanks to all of you for your patience and continued support. Please leave a kudos/comment if you enjoyed this chapter, or check out the corresponding [tumblr post](https://ahsokatvno.tumblr.com/post/176412142413/liaison-chapter-4-kylo-would-reach-behind-him)!! Love you allllll


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A pity, then, that his own soul was just not meant to be one that could reciprocate. He had tried, once. When he had told her she was not alone. And then a thousand lifetimes later he had mucked it up so badly he had wished for the first instance in his life that he could reverse time, redo the past._
> 
> _Yes, he would go back, he realized, all the way back if he needed. He would relive a childhood of torment and trouble just to stop that moment, to keep her tears from falling, her lips from trembling. But the past was the past, and he couldn’t change it, no matter how much he wanted to._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting!! The last two weeks have been so hectic and crazy, I'm lucky to have found the time to sit down and write this update. Thanks as always to Becca and Abby for beta'ing and putting up with my nonsense. I hope you all enjoy!!

True to his word, Kylo arrived not a minute later than one hour past shipfall at Rey’s door.

She was still fussing with the hem of her gown when she heard the automatic chime at her main door. In truth, she had spent the better part of the last hour fishing through the rack of gowns— most of them too flashy, too revealing, or impossible to put on— and lying on the bed, groaning into one of her pillows about the mess she found herself in. When she had agreed to dinner that afternoon, things had been so much simpler; it was just going to be a meal and professional discussion about the goings-on of the capital construction, perhaps some other issues highlighted in the Concordance. When she had been presented with these gowns, however, something in her had seized up, unable to continue. She knew how to scavenge, and fight, and had gotten better at bending the Force to her will… but dressing up like some shining piece of metal, smiling and shown off to the Supreme Leader? That wasn’t her. It wasn’t even the girl on Coruscant, who had found a quiet joy in the simple gowns she would wear to Senate hearings, guarding General Organa. This was clearly unraveling out of her control, morphing into something she couldn’t contain. _Am I really just a liaison? Or something more?_

In the end, with Kylo’s words of _entirely professional_ as her mantra, she had settled for a sleek black dress, cut from a soft fabric, that brushed the floor and hugged her tightly. When she glanced in the floor length mirror fastened to the rack, she grimaced at the sight of her chest, enhanced by the tightness. _This doesn’t even look like me,_ she sorely thought, carding a hand through her hair. _I don’t recognize myself._ The black gown was modest in comparison to some of the flashier pieces brought to her, though, so she elected to keep it on.

After that, ignoring the sets of jewelry arranged neatly on the bed, Rey had shoved her fingers through the tangled ends of her hair, attempting to make herself somewhat presentable before Kylo arrived. Sprung free from their buns, her locks arranged themselves in a frizzy, haphazard mess around her face. After wrestling with it for minutes on end, she finally admitted defeat and tied the mop at the nape of her neck, bringing some of the tamer strands to rest against her shoulder.

She had been grappling with a pair of black heels sharp enough to cut glass when the door chimed. Securing the last straps, and taking a few practice steps to assure she wouldn’t fall on her face in front of the Supreme Leader of the First Order, she took a deep breath and made her way over to the door.

_Just dinner. Just dinner._

* * *

 

When her door slid open, Kylo barely recognized the woman who waited for him.

Rey was a vision in pure black. The soft fabric was pressed tightly against her skin and melted off of her all the same, pooling in soft curves down her back and across the floor. Despite her appearance, she seemed shy to be seen like this, and her head bowed a moment after they made initial eye contact, a precious pink flush searing across her skin.

“You look—” _beautiful_ , his tongue nearly betrayed him, so desperate to please her, but one cleared throat later he had composed himself again. “Nice. The velvet compliments you.”

Rey’s brows furrowed. “Velvet?”

And, oh, it might embarrass her all over again, but he couldn’t keep that crestfallen look off his face, disappointed in the whole galaxy for letting this girl live out nineteen years and never knowing what something as simple as velvet was. Her life on Jakku had sculpted her from a soft girl into a strong woman, grains of sand carried on violent winds whipping away any trace of softness or luxury in her physical form— and yes, he could see the hard planes of muscle beneath browned skin, even now, when she was dressed up like some antiquated royal who had never wanted for anything in her life. And yet, those winds had left her heart soft, naive, open to each and every ingenuous soul that could show it in return. It baffled him, how someone could be so hard, and yet so soft.

A pity, then, that his own soul was just not meant to be one that could reciprocate. He had tried, once. When he had told her she was not alone. And then a thousand lifetimes later he had mucked it up so badly he had wished for the first instance in his life that he could reverse time, redo the past.

Yes, he would go back, he realized, all the way back if he needed. He would relive a childhood of torment and trouble just to stop that moment, to keep her tears from falling, her lips from trembling. But the past was the past, and he couldn’t change it, no matter how much he wanted to.

“The fabric,” he finally choked out in response, averting his eyes from the blush that was slowly making its way down her exposed chest.

Against his better judgment, Kylo held out an elbow for her to take, and Rey did, slim fingers curling around the solid muscles cording his forearm. He yearned to wrap a hand around her waist, plant kisses on the soft skin of her neck, brush away the strand of hair that had fallen down across her cheek. Instead, he allowed himself a quick clench of his fists, a heady breath in, then out, and then they were leaving her quarters and heading down the main hallway.

* * *

When Rey had envisioned Kylo’s quarters, she had conjured up Draconian ideas of the basics: standard ‘fresher, severe bed frame carved from bloodied bone with a table and chairs to match, and perhaps a torture chamber or two in the back. However, when his own door _whizz_ ed open before them, she found a common room not dissimilar to her own chambers. A long black table that could have hosted a dozen dinner guests sat with only two chairs tucked beneath it, one at each end. To her surprise, two braziers glowed, alight at their centers, at opposite ends of the room, giving the mostly dark common room an orange glow. She would have found it ambient, if it wasn’t so impractical.

Separate doors on either side of the long room most likely led off to a bedroom and an office, as there was no desk or bed that Rey could see. A panel of slate gray marked the entrance to the ‘fresher in the corner, and side tables by the main door were littered with datapads and tools even Rey couldn’t recognize.

Dimly, she registered his presence behind her, as the door closed and sealed them into the main room. “Snoke kept tidy chambers,” she said by way of small talk, turning to offer him a polite smile.

She saw his eye twitch imperceptibly. “I had his own rooms sealed off after he…” Kylo trailed off, then cleared his throat. “These are my original quarters.”

“Oh.” Rey couldn’t think of an apt response in time, so when Kylo signaled to the chair closest to her, she could only lift up her skirts and stride across the room, settling in after he pulled out the seat for her.

“The former Supreme Leader had kept his rooms heavily decorated, displaying art from cultures of different planets he had conquered,” Kylo explained as he took his own seat across from her. “After I inherited his position, many of the higher-ranking officers insisted we archive the art, perhaps destroy it.” When he took his seat, he signaled to an attending droid waiting in the corner, who sped into a side door Rey hadn’t seen before. It returned only moments later with a tray of drinks in hand, and deposited one on each end of the table. Kylo sipped absently from his while keeping his eyes on Rey, and she realized dimly he was waiting for her to weigh in.

“Shouldn’t they be returned?” she asked, reaching for her own drink. “If it belongs to a certain culture, it shouldn’t have been removed in the first place.”

“Hm.” Kylo took another swig, and Rey finally studied her own glass, filled with a dark amber liquid, with flecks of gold floating on top. When she took a sip, her throat burned, and it took every effort for her not to cough. “In any case, the matter is most likely outside of my jurisdiction.”

Rey’s brow furrowed at that. “You’re the Supreme Leader. I didn’t think anything was outside of your jurisdiction.” She found herself reaching for her glass again, taking smaller sips of the drink to avoid that burning sensation.

“Some things are,” Kylo countered, his eyes glued to the stem of his own glass. “It would be considered disrespectful to overstep; there’s an officer whose sole purpose aboard this ship is to delegate the spoils of victory. I couldn’t subvert their own commands.”

“It shouldn’t matter whether or not you step on their toes. You lead the First Order; anyone’s command can be overridden by your own.” Rey knew she should let the conversation pass, but it was difficult to resist. She remembered how Leia led by example, and would have never let the wrong thing happen simply because it was considered overreaching.

“You may be right,” Kylo said. “Still, there’s a thin line between an overstep and outright tyranny. But this isn’t what I wanted to discuss with you.” The awkward tension between them was nearly palpable, but Kylo seemingly ignored it as he set down his glass, signaling again to the droid. “The colonization.”

“Yes,” Rey responded, welcoming the change in topic as she set down her drink. She was trying her hardest to act the diplomat, play her part, hoping she didn’t look like a fool.

“I never apologized for the… _untimely_ attack during one of our first days on Rakata Prime.” As he began, the attending droid re-entered with two small plates covered with what Rey could only describe as colored leaves. Shades of green and violet and seared orange were doused in a thick, clear sauce, and accompanied with yet another drink, which Rey could recognize as wine.

Kylo picked up his fork as he continued to speak. “One of our ranking generals drafted an intelligence report on the assault shortly after it occured, and we’ve since taken preventative measures to avoid another engagement— hence the security detail accompanying our missions to the surface.” He speared a few leaves with his fork and took a bite in between sentences, the light crunch of them the only sound between them for a few moments. Rey faintly remembered something similar served in the Resistance base on D’Qar— _salad_ , she recollected. Though, the lettuce had been a lighter shade of green, almost yellow, and limp from age. Tentatively, she took a bite of her own.

“In truth, we were only expecting to find plant life on the planet— certainly nothing sentient. A scan of the surface was even conducted beforehand to avoid something like this, and it came back empty.” Kylo took another bite, another sip. Rey followed suit, absently relishing the sweet taste of the dressing mingling with the bitter acidity from the wine. Everything was delicious, but the more they spoke, the more her appetite ebbed. “After the attack, we had to consider all options, and utilized intelligence from Order-aligned systems. From there, we’ve managed to uncover a secret network of warriors who claim to trace lineage back to the One, a long-dead tribe leader of the Black Rakata.”

All this new information was making Rey’s head swim. “The Black Rakata?” she managed between sips of wine.

“The largest organization of the Rakata people since the collapse of the Infinite Empire, led by the One himself. This new group— Children of the One, they’ve begun to call themselves— claim birthright to settle on Rakata Prime and create a new colony, a new species and culture honoring their predecessors.” He paused to push back his now-empty plate, and the droid wasted no time in clearing it for him. “Apparently, they have no problem resorting to violence to achieve their goals, but are hesitant to utilize any sort of tool or weapon the Black Rakata didn’t have access to. Thus their tribal nature.”

Rey swallowed, leaning back slightly to allow her own place to be cleared and replaced with a seared piece of steak by the droid. She was hesitant to ask what kind of animal this came from, but she had never been one to turn away food. Kylo began sawing his knife through his own steak, cutting it to thin slices, and Rey followed suit, popping a few bites in her mouth along the way. The meat was savory, but soft like butter, and nearly melted on her tongue.

“So,” Kylo said, “what would you have me do?”

Rey stopped chewing, her fork stilling in her hand. “What?”

“I’ve informed you, as designated liaison between the Resistance and the First Order, of the details in this situation. I also feel inclined to gauge your own assessment before moving forward with a plan of how to… deal with the Children.”

“You want my opinion.”

There was a tense beat of silence before Kylo responded, his eyes glued to her. “Yes.”

Rey took a sip of wine to stall, ignoring the intensity of Kylo’s gaze, then leaned back in her seat. “These… Children,” she began, smoothing a cloth napkin across her thighs, “they claim Rakata lineage?”

Kylo nodded, wiping the corners of his mouth as he swallowed. “ Descendants of species the One had apparently enslaved. Most are human— a pair of wide-set eyes the only resemblance to the Rakata they bear.”

“So you think they’re lying?”

Kylo shrugged. “Could be. An organized group like that could make a compelling case with the New Republic— the Senate bends for anything. They respect so-called ‘birthright’ more than a sense of order.” There was an edge to his voice that made Rey stiffen, just for a moment, before he maintained his composure. “Besides, there’s almost no way of proving any lineage to _any_ Rakata, let alone the One. For all we know, the leader could have been a myth.”

Rey pursed her lips, unsure of how to proceed. “Well, I don’t think a group like that would organize around a baseless claim. There has to be a reason why they’ve emerged, and—”

“No,” Kylo interrupted, finally setting down his fork. “You don’t think it’s suspicious that this group is _just now_ making itself known, going public with a surprise attack on one of the largest governments in the galaxy? This is coordinated. Someone else had a hand in this.”

Rey bit back a scoff. “That sounds ridiculous. You said yourself that no one has visited the planet in years. It could be that this group— these Children— have been living here, under the radar, and managed to evade your scanners when we first arrived. Now that we’re on their land, with no prior communication, they may have thought that violent engagement was their only option.”

“I think it’s more plausible to believe that the Resistance tracked us here from Coruscant than to conclude that an entire society eluded detection from the First Order.”

She couldn’t help but narrow her eyes. “You’re serious.”

“Completely.” They were practically sneering at each other.

Rey’s fists balled in the material of the napkin on her lap. “If the Resistance had planned to create a false tribe, arm them with _spears_ , and place them on the planet, I think I would have known about it.”

Kylo scoffed, leaning back in his seat. “Why would Leia tell _you_ about a covert operation like that? It has nothing to do with you.” _You. A scavenger._

The barb stung, but Rey had no problem firing back. “It’s not hard to earn her trust. Though I suppose you wouldn’t know.”

The air between them crackled, thick with tension. Kylo all but seethed, halfway out of his chair, while Rey was trying her best to maintain some semblance of poise, fingers intertwined on her knee while she surveyed him with a raised eyebrow. She could see the attending droid standing in the threshold of the doorway, nervously calculating when the best time would be to interject and clear their plates away.

A long pause stretched between them before Kylo spoke again. “You have no idea what the General’s _trust_ actually entails. And you have no idea what the Resistance is. What hides there, in darkness.” He planted himself back in his seat, his composure somewhat regained, but still leaned forward, his hands fidgeting in place.

Rey scowled. “You can’t intimidate me. I’ve been in their ranks; I know the people behind the turrets, the faces behind the masks. They’re not sinister or evil; their motives are pure and good.”

“An army is more than the sum of its parts.”

Another scoff bitten back. “This coming from the man who would rather run away and hide in the comfort of darkness than have a conversation with his parents.” _While they’re still alive._

This was apparently enough to rile Kylo to his boiling point, and he stood with a clamor of dishes and the _screech_ of his own chair across the polished floor. “You don’t think I wanted to please my parents, to have a family who loved me and understood me, to be a son that made them proud? Please. Try making two people who thrive on disobedience and rebellion happy.”

Rey was matching him measure for measure, any illusion of diplomatic restraint long forgotten. “Why couldn’t you just be thankful you had parents at all?”

“You don’t know what it’s like. To _make someone happy_. You’ve never had to try; there’s never been anyone around for you to please, until you found that traitor of a stormtrooper. He— and the rest of that band of hapless rebels— is the only semblance of true compassion you’ve ever been able to find.” His rage simmered low, contained but still burning. “And attachments forged in the fires of war are quick to break.”

The table between them was the only thing keeping them from going toe to toe. “Keep them out of your mouth,” Rey all but spit. “Finn, Leia, the Resistance— you don’t know the _first_ thing about them. Any of them. You think you do— maybe you knew some of them, once— but people change. _You_ certainly did.”

Kylo turned away, if only for a second, his hand reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Why are we even fighting about this? It’s pointless. You can’t change my mind any more than I can change yours.”

Rey knew she should let the topic die, let them sit down, have dessert like nothing happened. But this tension between them, this animosity, had been hell for her since she’d arrived on board the _Finalizer_. On a ship of people she’d never met before, he’d been the greatest stranger of all. And the least she owed herself was airing out her grievances with the man responsible for them.

“Because you’re afraid of me— afraid of what I’d become if you didn’t have me under your thumb. That’s why you created the peace terms, why I was the only liaison you’d accept. Because you were afraid of having the only other Force user— of having _your equal_ — out of your control.”

Time seemed to stop— the ship around them, the room they stood in, _everything_ came to a screeching halt. Kylo had already prepared a retort; Rey could see it in the way his lips were nearly curled, his brow furrowed. But she could see him process her words, too: his eyes widening, the retort dying on his lips. Any sort of rage seemed to go out of him instantly, like a pail of water thrown over wildfire. His shoulders dropped, and his gaze ripped from her, a meek hand running through his hair.

“Well?” Rey pressed, voice wavering through tears that threatened to fall. “Do you deny it?”

Kylo turned away, a curse quiet on his lips. “Rey, I—” He closed his mouth, opened it, closed it again. A vague sense of defeat settled over his features.

After another beat of silence, Rey tossed her napkin on the table, suddenly disgusted with him, with herself, with everything. The dark walls of his room seemed to press in on her, choking her, and all she could think about was how badly she wanted to leave. She couldn’t force herself to meet his eyes as she stepped away from the table, pacing herself to avoid running for the exit.

At the threshold of his quarters, she faintly, almost comically, remembered her manners. Turning on the sharp point of her heel, she kept her eyes glued to the hand Kylo had rested on the top of his chair, still unable to meet his gaze. “Thank you for dinner.”

“Rey—”

She didn’t stop to wait for his response, instead letting the door slide open and walking, head hung, into the corridor and towards the lifts.

Only when she was sure the door had shut behind her, and that she was mostly alone in the halls of the _Finalizer_ , did she finally let her tears fall, blurring her vision into shades of black and grey. Her cheeks burned, fingers shaking as she reached up to wipe the moisture away.

She thought once she spoke her mind, unraveled the ball of tension that had been building in her since the Concordance was signed— before that, even— she would feel lighter, freer, a weight lighted from her shoulders. Instead that ball of tension had hardened to steel and sunk to her stomach, making her feel sick. She had spoken the truth, laid it all out for him in this tight, tense battle between them. So why didn’t she feel the victory?

To keep herself moving, her mind off of the events of dinner, she went over the routine she would complete when she returned to her quarters: unstrap her feet from these torturous shoes, peel off the dress, and crawl into bed, another scratch indented on her wall.

...But what would come after morning? Another unending day of mindlessly surveying officers, avoiding Kylo and the stumbling, graceless conversation they would attempt, saying nothing of consequence while everything, all their history and unspoken truths, was held at bay.

One thing from the night’s events stayed in the forefront of her mind despite all efforts: that terrible choking feeling, the suffocation of the room around her. It hadn’t just been Kylo; it had been the gown she wore, the droid that served them their meal, the whole bloody _ship_ that reeked of a tyrannical First Order.

Her mind was on her quarters, on the night of sleep ahead of her, but her feet rebelled, and took her elsewhere.

The hangar Rey was escorted to every morning was usually bustling with workers, loading cargo onto the shuttle as the landing party prepared for their daily planetfall. Tonight, however, the room was cavernous, and mostly empty— night had fallen on Rakata Prime, and most of the officers and stormtroopers working were on second shift. Still, Rey found too much space and not enough cover between her and the craft she intended to steal— a clean-looking TIE fighter, stacked up against the wall along rows of identical starfighters. Discarding her shoes at the side entrance to keep the _click_ of the heels from blowing her cover, Rey glided quickly across the hangar’s floor, staying close to the hangar walls to avoid detection. The slim docket of officers working the night shift may not spot her, but that didn’t stop Rey from stealing nervous glances up to the viewport where the generals and lieutenants monitored the operations of the hangar.

After carefully slinking past various crates and maintenance vehicles, Rey was able to climb up the operating shaft and into the TIE’s cockpit undetected. The skirt of her gown snagged on the main door as she closed it, and she hurried to pull the dress in before firing up the ship. _I guess this wasn’t made to be worn in a starfighter._

The controls of the _Falcon_ slowly came back to her memory as the TIE’s twin engines powered on and the panel glowed to life. The first thing Rey saw was the blinking symbol of the ship’s tether still attached to one of the hexagonal wings. If Rey peeked out the viewport, she could see the tether, poorly repaired and reattached to the wing. The fix would be easy, especially with the shoddy reconstruction.

“Looks like I’m not the first person to steal a TIE here,” Rey murmured to herself, punching in the commands to disable the tether. Once the symbol stopped blinking, she fed the thrusters some gas, testing the engine. She could practically hear the ion purring in its engines. Under any other circumstances, she would have smiled. Instead she gunned it, pulling a sharp left and veering out of the hangar and into space.

Rey waited for the alarm to sound, for the cannons to begin firing. She had no co-pilot, and thus no way to man the guns, but she figured through some heavy evasion techniques and a light sprinkle of the Force, she could make the jump to hyperspace without a scratch. However, the farther she went, she noticed that no one was coming after her: no squadron of TIEs, no green light of cannons powering up.

_He’s protecting me_ , she realized. _He’s letting me go._

It was the last crack before the dam in her fell. Rey pulled the switch to prime the hyperdrive, set the computer to auto-pilot, and folded in on herself, pulling her knees to her chest and pressing her head forward, letting sob after sob rack her body.

The tears came quickly enough, now that there was no one to see her cry. Everything that had happened since the day Kylo Ren had entered the Senate building on Coruscant, and everything before, all came crashing down on her.

She felt grief, grief for losing the only family she’d ever known to an Order full of tyrants and monsters, headed by the one person she could never manage to avoid. Grief for the look in Leia’s eyes when she had said goodbye, the countless times her and Poe had offered to deny the terms on Coruscant for her. Grief for the goodbye she had never been able to give to Finn.

And part of her, a part of her she could barely admit existed, cried for Kylo’s grief, too, for a man so broken and beaten by his own life that he resorted to creating his own semblance of belonging for himself, in the shape of her. She cried for the look in his eyes when she had snapped at him, the muted concession of guilt, of surrender in his posture. She cried for the stillness of the _Finalizer_ , the clemency she probably didn’t deserve, but he gave to her anyway.

More than anything though, she felt that hollow, empty grief for losing the person she thought she was, the scavenger waiting for her family. She had been too busy moving on, fighting a war, to ever notice that the change had happened. It wasn’t violent, or angry grief; it was mourning, lamenting a version of herself that only existed in memories. Years ago, she would have jumped at the chance to train like a Jedi, to use the Force, to carve some slant of definition and purpose into her life. Now that that had happened, though, it just made her ache all the more for the one thing she had truly wanted— parents. A family. _Belonging_.

And now her only belonging was gone.

Rey had no idea how long she sat there, sobbing into the black velvet draping over her knees, but when she thought she was finished, the computer was blinking at her again. The hyperdrive had primed itself, and the TIE fighter was already calculating coordinates for nearby drop points. She passively scanned them as she wiped her puffy eyes, looking for a set of coordinates she recognized, when her breath caught in her throat.

The third set in the list were coordinates she recognized from the _Falcon_ , one of the first times she’d piloted it. It was a set she’d since memorized. And the Force was coming off of them in waves.

_Jakku_.

She selected the coordinates, then pressed down on the adjoining lever. The stars in the viewport blended into a uniform streak of blue, and then the hyperdrive kicked in, popping Rey into a vortex of warping space.

The trip wasn’t far; despite being an entire region away, Jakku was one of the closest planets not in the Rakata system. When the TIE dropped out of hyperspace, the sight of the arid planet brought a fresh wave of nostalgia crashing down on her.

The trip down to her old home was more muscle memory than actual navigation. Once she’d entered the atmosphere, it was just south past the sinking fields— she could barely spot Niima Outpost to the west— and then she saw it. An overturned AT-AT, rusted by years of disuse, lay half-hidden in the sand, its belly hollowed out as a home for a young girl.

She made landfall quickly, the TIE’s wings sinking slightly into the pliable sand on the surface. It was barely dawn, and this sector of the planet was usually abandoned, but Rey still primed the alarm and input the manual lock before exiting through the ship’s top lid. Only a scavenger knew the value of a brand new, working starfighter.

She thought, in dreams, that she could remember the feeling of sand between her toes, the quiet breeze in the pre-dawn light. She thought she remembered how the metal of the AT-AT was rusted and gray, peeling but functional.

Memories couldn’t do reality justice.

The rising sun painted the AT-AT in shades of warm light, casting deep shadows across the dunes. The velvet of her gown swept through the grains of sand, bare feet sinking deep into the dirt as she walked towards the structure, fingers grazing lightly against the torn metal. The belly of the AT-AT was still open, and if she craned her neck she could spot a wall covered in scratch marks. _One for each day_.

The shelter itself was smaller than she remembered. Poking her head in, she could still identify the area where her cot laid, where a pot of red flowers grew despite the arid climate. There was her wall of marks, a tarnished bowl she’d used for mixing portions into meals, the old Rebel pilot helmet sitting empty in its corner.

But the AT-AT had been scavenged, discovered by some lucky passerby. The bedroll she’d used was gone, various bits of machinery she’d kept on hand all disappeared. In some places, the walls had been torn off in order to scavenge the scrap metal and dead wiring behind them. When she poked her head out of the threshold, she could even see parts of the upper legs of the AT-AT torn away, the metal no doubt brought to Plutt for portions. Her home had been dismantled by an unsuspecting stranger.

The thought would’ve brought tears to her eyes, in any other circumstance, but she’d had her share of crying in the TIE fighter. Still, that ugly sense of sorrow, of hollow loneliness, settled in the pit of her stomach, threatening to eat her up. Another home, another part of her past, lost to her forever. She leaned against the AT-AT, sliding down to rest in the sand as morning settled on the planet.

She closed her eyes, listening to her surroundings, absently tapping into the Force to meditate on her lost home. She didn’t know how long she sat there for, passively observing the energy of the planet, but when she opened her eyes, a spot of white buried in dust next to her caught her attention. Her hand reached forward to retrieve it.

With a rush of grim acknowledgment, she recognized the old doll of a starfighter pilot she had fashioned out of yarn, a dozen lifetimes ago. How much had changed since she’d seen this last? When she’d made the doll, she had barely dreamed of _meeting_ a rebel pilot, let alone befriending one, or working alongside the Resistance. The girl who’d made this doll hadn’t dared to dream so big.

Her toes dug into the earth, the warmth of sand baking in the sun all day radiating into her feet. The base of her head leaned against the cool metal, and her eyes shot skyward to watch morning drape itself over the sky.

She hadn’t known what to expect, coming back here. A reality she could return to, maybe. A hope that she could resurrect a life for herself, and no one else. But there was too much to be done, not enough to keep her here. The parents she’d waited so long for were gone. The life she’d needed then was never going to come.

So it was time to go home.

* * *

 

“Supreme Leader, we have an unsanctioned departure from Hangar Bay Two—”

“Let it go.” Kylo interjected, raising a hand to stop the officer’s report. A hint of disappointment in his voice, a sag in his shoulders, was corrected a beat later. He’d been waiting on the bridge just in case— on the off chance she did something rash.

“But, sir—”

“You heard me.” Kylo didn’t bother to disguise the thin vein of ice in his words. “The departure was sanctioned, per my orders.”

The officer paused, stilled. “Yes, Supreme Leader.”

Kylo allowed himself a short exhale through his nose, turning away from the viewport and making his way back towards the lifts to his quarters. He hoped a session of meditation in his bedroom would help clear his mind of memories from their ill-fated dinner, but he sorely doubted it.

How close she had come to realizing the truth, realizing what lay in Kylo’s own heart. That she presumed he brought her here as a prisoner, as an insolent pupil to be kept under watch, showed him that she thought less of him than he had originally hoped. Her proximity to his own reality— his brush with the truth— had left him shaken. Their brief alliance in fleeting moments through their bond, on the _Supremacy_ ,— to her, it seemed, that was over. They were back to being adversaries, on opposing sides of a war that never seemed to die, no matter how many Concordances were signed.

The lift doors closed behind him, and he soared back up to his quarters alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Angst August lmao!! Did we all make it? I'll admit this chapter was a killer to write... the slow burn is real but I PROMISE THINGS WILL GET BETTER. This is not a fluffy fic, but it's also not a dark fic. You just gotta get through the pain first. Regardless I appreciate you all pushing through the tough times with me hahaha
> 
> As always thanks for reading!! Feel free to leave a kudos/comment, or talk to me on tumblr (ahsokatvno) or twitter (@hmkylo)!!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I've made a handful of mistakes lately. This one will hurt the least._

_Track: **THE END OF LOVE**_

_Florence + The Machine_

* * *

The first time that Rey had visited Naboo, months ago, the sight of vibrant rolling hills and soft blue waterfalls was enough to take her breath away. She had only managed to reside on the planet for a few weeks, the peace terms being called just as the Resistance was moving into its new home, but she knew she would never forget the landscape of this place, the quiet beauty of it.

Poe had initially scoped out some abandoned base on a desert planet in the Outer Rim for them to hole up on, but at the last moment Leia had received a transmission from the former Queen Apailana of Naboo, offering them shelter and supplies for as long as it took for the Resistance to regain their footing. She had visited the base often, usually conversing in hushed tones with Leia in corners of the command center, but Rey had never met her in person. According to Poe, former state leaders not holding public office weren’t allowed to publicly support a political affiliation or group, and even if they had, any whiff of extremism was strictly banned on the planet. Apailana, however, had not been able to refuse the call of the daughter of Padmé Amidala.

Even for a former queen, Apailana’s private estate in the Lake Country was far from modest; a sprawling mansion capped with vibrant blue domes decorated the steep hills opposite a field framed by waterfalls. To Rey, the sight was more than idyllic. After years of scrounging a living in the desert, the landscape was euphoric, and it nearly brought tears to her eyes all over again. Before she could linger on those feelings, though, a button on her TIE’s control panel began blinking. She pressed it quickly, and the transmission began to play throughout the tiny cockpit.

_“—repercussions from Her Majesty. I repeat, stand down and reroute to Theed to gain permission to land, or face immediate repercussions—”_

The voice clicked into place almost instantly for Rey, and she scrambled to intercept and send her own message. “Kaydel! Kaydel _,_ I’m not First Order. This isn’t an assault. It’s _—_ it’s Rey.”

The crackle of static was the only sound in the cockpit for a long moment. She thought she may have heard Lieutenant Connix gasp, could imagine her removing her communications headset as the silence persisted. But eventually, she heard the static clear, and Kaydel’s voice sounded through the cockpit. “Permission to land.” A pause. “Welcome back, Rey.” Then there was a click, and the transmission had ended.

The landing dock, nestled between two of the rooftops, was empty of people when Rey first spotted it on her initial descent. She’d had to loop back around, miscalculating the landing speed of the TIE fighter, but by the time the flat wings of the starfighter were skidding across the duracrete of the dock, a small crowd was forming by the bay doors.

Rey wasted no time in powering down the TIE and exiting the cockpit through the top, gathering the long skirt of her gown in her fists as bare feet made contact with the duracrete floor. Finn was the first face she saw, heading towards her, a smile lighting up his face.

They were both running across the dock in an instant, desperate to return to each other’s company, like they had once on Crait. When his arms collapsed around her, any shred of doubt or unease she had felt about leaving melted.

“Rey, I was…” Finn’s low voice was coated with thinly veiled emotion. “I was so worried about you.”

She pulled back, giving him a teasing glance. “What, you thought I couldn’t take care of myself?”

Finn’s chuckle melted on his lips.

She noticed he was wearing a uniform, a _real_ Resistance uniform with pins and medals, but before she could comment on it, the rest of the crowd swarmed around them, ushering Rey inside.

The base on Naboo was a jarring amalgamation of basic and complex, opulent and utilitarian, gilded and antiquated. Outdated communications devices salvaged from the _Falcon_ laid dormantly on shining glass tables made of worshyr wood and inlaid with polished moonstones. The main atrium of the base, once a rectangular ballroom that hosted all varieties of parties and dances courtesy of the queen, now housed the base’s main hallway, where a slew of doorways led to various armories and command centers. The chandeliers, with glowing sein jewels at their center, held silent sentry over the operation of a secret hideaway for one of the galaxy’s most notorious rebel groups turned peacekeeping force.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” Finn asked behind her, a comforting hand on her back, leading her forward as the crowd around them narrowed and dispersed. “Nothing happened to you?”

Rey shook her head, fingers holding tight to her skirts so as not to trip over the black train. She had noticed a small line of sand following her around, as the dirt of Jakku left her costume and deposited itself on the floor. “I wish I could explain this to you, Finn.”

“You can try.” His tone was lighthearted, but Rey could sense an edge to his voice, a suspicion confirmed by the hard glint in his eyes, accented by the warm light of the chandeliers above them.

She shook her head, turning her head forward again. “I just need to speak to Leia.”

“You know I’ll always be here for you, Rey,” Finn said next to her. His voice seemed to be just an echo, nearly missed by her ears. His hand snaked around hers. “No matter what.”

Before she could respond to that, Rose all but jumped out from a column carved in marble, still clad in her old olive jumpsuit. “Rey!” she squealed.

Rey released Finn’s hand to wrap her arms around her friend, relishing in the feeling of warm arms squeezing around her midsection. “I missed you so much,” Rose murmured in her ear, emotion thick in her voice, before pulling away. “When you left for Coruscant, for peace negotiations, I thought they’d fall through, you’d come right back—”

“That’s what we _all_ thought,” Finn muttered beside her, leaning forward to sneak an arm around Rose’s midsection.

“I did too,” Rey admitted, allowing herself a small pout. “But… things didn’t pan out that way.”

A short, awkward silence persisted over the three of them for a moment, before Rose cleared her throat. “Well, I’m here to escort you to Leia, so…”

“Right.” Rey breathed, turning back to Finn and laying a quivering hand on his shoulder. “I’ll see you soon—I promise.”

Finn didn’t quite look like he believed her, but he nodded anyway, and let them go when the pair of girls turned to walk away.

Rose took Rey’s arm at the crook of her elbow and led her down the wide atrium. The glass ceilings, since painted over with thick black paint to shield the base’s interior from sight, kept the rooms dim, the chandeliers reflecting warm yellow light onto dark windows.

General Organa had seemed to establish court in one of the roomier command centers, seated by a scratched viewscreen, the green outlines of tactile ship projections illuminating her smooth features. Queen Apailana stood beside her, a slender hand resting on the back of Leia’s chair, with a sympathetic expression on her face. When Rey had first met the former queen, she had expected a woman whose regality preceded her, all formalities and arrogance, dressed in silks with a face painted white and turning up her nose at the rough edges of a scavenger like her. She’d been intimidated, but it turned out there was no need; the queen was kind, and gentle, with a strong and formidable streak in her, like a sword swathed in furs.

The queen stepped back, and Leia stepped forward. “Rey,” she said, embracing the younger woman in her arms. “It’s so good to see you again.” When she pulled away, Rey could see wrinkles etched deeper, skin a touch paler since the last time she’d seen her. “We’ve all been so worried about you.”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Rey replied, trying an easy smile.

“Here, sit down,” Apailana said behind the general, stepping away to push forward a cushy-looking armchair. Rey sat down gingerly, not wanting to ruin the luxurious upholstery with the sand still sticking to her gown.

“You’re not hurt?” Leia said, leaning forward in her own seat to rest a hand on Rey’s knee, her eyes pools of concern.

“What? No, no, I’m fine.” Rey reassured her with a wave of her hand.

Leia still looked perplexed. “Well, did something happen?”

“No,” Rey said, knowing deep down she was lying. “No, things are fine.”

Leia sat back in her seat. “Well, then, I hate to ask this, but… why did you come back?”

Rey buried her face in her hands, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. “I don’t know, honestly. I think it was dozens of little things, all building up. But…” She hesitated, sliding her gaze up to an expectant Leia. “I had dinner with Kylo Ren.”

Leia stilled. “Oh.”

“I’ve been working with him closely, ever since we landed on the new capital, Rakata Prime.”

Leia nodded fervently then, signaling to a junior officer across the room. “So the intel we received was true; the planet _will be_ their new capital—”

“No, General, that’s not what I meant,” Rey interrupted. After a moment, Leia waved away the officer, shaking her head while her eyes stayed trained on Rey. “Back on Coruscant, Poe didn’t think it was possible that Ren would want me just for my Force abilities. But you and I, we thought differently. And the more time I’ve spent with him, on Rakata Prime, the more I think that’s true.”

Leia nodded, silent for a moment as she processed Rey’s words. “Okay. I understand.” She leaned back, glancing at Apailana behind her for just a moment. “And then, when you had this dinner…?”

“Things kind of blew up,” Rey admitted, avoiding Leia’s gaze. “We ended up fighting—about everything. I just couldn’t be there anymore; between him, the ship, the planet, all of it. It was just... pressing down on me.”

“I understand,” Leia said, and when Rey opened her mouth to protest, that she could never understand, she stopped her with a hand. “Being a liaison between two warring powers is a great responsibility. I’ve been a politician for most of my life, the pressures of keeping the galaxy intact and functioning often falling on my shoulders. I know the feeling of wanting to give up, to run away and hide when you feel like you’re out of solutions.” She leaned forward to rest a hand on one of Rey’s shoulders. “I don’t blame you for coming back to us. Part of me regrets ever letting you accept this position in the first place. But you’re stronger than you realize, Rey. You’ve made it this far. This fear, this anxiety you feel, let it drive you.”

Leia’s words hung in the air; the command center had gone quiet as she had spoken. Rey could only nod, letting her words wash over her.

“You’re tired,” Leia said. “It’s been a long day for you. Get some rest, wash up, and you can give me the full debrief later.”

“Thank you,” Rey said, a smile creeping across her features. “Before I leave you,” She remembered suddenly, fishing the small disk out of the stitching of her dress, “I managed to gather a bit of intel while I was on the planet’s surface. I swiped it from the datapad of a high ranking officer; it looks classified, you know, top secret.” She handed the disk to Leia unceremoniously, before she could change her mind. _This is the right thing to do,_ she told herself. “I just thought you might want to look over it before we speak.”

Leia clasped the chip in her hands, holding Rey’s fingers just a moment before she pulled away. “Thank you, Rey. We’ll speak privately tomorrow.”

* * *

Queen Apailana herself offered to escort Rey to a set of quarters where she could use the fresher, sleep, and dress in clean clothes. Rey was secretly itching to return to her old room— little more than a bunk and table she had shared with Rose, nestled in the annals of the estate’s armory— but when Apailana presented her with a sprawling suite, equipped with a double refresher and a bed large enough for four, it was all Rey could do to thank the queen as she closed the double doors behind her. She wasted no time stripping out of her dress, ignoring the dirt and grime caked on her bare feet, and padding over to one of the glass doors leading to one of the ‘freshers.

The room held a real water shower and two sinks with polished marble and gold faucets, and was almost half the size of the chamber before it. _Just like the Finalizer_ , she remembered, unbidden, but hastily shoved that train of thought down before it could spiral. _No. I’m not going to think about that now._ She stepped into the shower and turned the water setting to the highest heat, letting her skin turn pink under its temperature. Small grains of sand swirled into the water and down the drain, washing her clean from any memory of Jakku, of the _Finalizer_. When she finally stepped out, a towel around her torso with her wet hair hanging loose, all she could think about was the bed waiting for her, the calm void of sleep.

A set of fresh clothes—the standard vest and leggings she had worn with the Resistance—had been laid out for her while she had showered. She took a moment to run her hands over the roughspun cloth, let herself remember a girl wearing this uniform, piloting the _Falcon_ , to find Luke Skywalker and help him defeat the First Order. Now she didn’t know whose hands felt this fabric, where the woman who would wear it was going next.

Peeling off the towel, she slipped under cream-white sheets, pulling the top quilt up to her chin, and collapsed against the pillows. As tired as she felt, as much as she wanted to wake up tomorrow and have everything be okay, her thoughts kept her awake long after the lights had dimmed.

 _Is this what growing up feels like?_ Rey thought to herself. _Taking accountability for your actions? Letting the guilt of your impulsiveness keep you up at night?_ She couldn’t help but let herself imagine what Kylo had done—what he was doing now. Did he throw a fit after she had left? Destroy her quarters? _But he couldn’t have,_ she remembered, the image of the unmoving _Finalizer_ in the rear view of her TIE fighter still clear in her memory. _He must have let me go. After everything I did, everything I said to him._ The thought of that, of him issuing the command that kept her alive, with her insults still fresh in his mind, nearly made her want to cry all over again. _I should never have left. I should have stayed, apologized. I made a mistake._

She became mutely aware of how empty the bed was, how large it still seemed even with her limbs sprawled across the sheets. There was a distance she felt between her and Ren, stars and planets and galaxies separating them, the regret of leaving him behind sitting in her stomach. Even on the _Finalizer_ , the physical relation between them had always been in the back of her mind. Those moments spent meditating in the jungle of Rakata Prime, their skin touching, or inches away, were still fresh in her memory, and she found a strange comfort in them, all alone in this bed.

Rey _missed_ him, she realized faintly. She missed Kylo Ren. His presence, close to her. Because the more she thought about it, the more she tried to convince herself that he was a monster after all, the less proof she could find in her memories to support that claim, and more that refuted it. More telling her that they were more similar than she cared to admit.

The loneliness seemed to swarm around her, kneading its way into every crack and crevice until it was swallowing her whole. She felt worse than those nights on the _Finalizer_ , worse than those long days on Jakku. _Maybe now that I have something to miss, just out of reach, it hurts worse._

Slowly, tentatively, she let her hand snake down past her stomach and between her legs, fingers trailing through coarse tufts of hair before settling around her clit. She hadn’t done this for a while—hadn’t needed to, or had the time to—and had to remind herself what to do, where to touch. And just when the pads of her fingers found that tight bead of nerves just above her cunt—a spark of electricity shooting through her pelvis and stomach, all the way to her throat—a sound outside her door made her start, losing her place. She counted to sixty, and then counted again, and then slowly settled her hand back in position.

And then—only then did she feel herself begin to lift, her mind and soul soaring past the bedroom, the mansion, the clouds above Naboo. Everything else fell away, and it was only her and herself, and somehow— _him_. Just the memory, the thought of him, swimming through her mind, tricking herself into thinking the hand rubbing her clit in smooth, slow circles was his. Her breath came shorter, quicker, her eyes fluttering shut unbidden, and then she really was rising, her hips pushing into the soft base of the mattress, then bucking, elbows digging in as her spine arched, hair thrown back. She was disconnected from herself, from everything, her mind detaching from the rest of her. She felt herself ripping in two, imagining him ripping her in two, lips on her lips, on her cunt, on _her_. Hands snaking through her hair; long, thick fingers closing tight around her throat with ease. Nothing else mattered, nothing else compared, to the chasm that unmeshed her, body from soul, threatening to break her apart and remake her all over again.

And something, something in the back of her mind she had made herself ignore, was threatening to break apart too, shatter in her mind. A shield, a tamper, on something essential to herself, her being, that threatened to come free. And acting on nothing but instinct, she released the tethers holding it together, opening back up that part of her mind to the rest of her.

And just when she was on the precipice of falling apart, of coming together, an image flashed before her eyes, just for an instant. _Him_.

That vacuum of sound. The focusing of the Force.

 _Ben_.

Her eyes shot open, breaths coming in hot gasps as she sat up, clutching the quilts around herself. In the corner, by the ‘fresher, a naked figure stood with his back to her, hunched over, with one hand planted against the wall. Rivulets of water ran down the planes of his back, and strands of black hair were plastered to his face. _It’s him_ , she recognized instantly.

“Ben?” Rey ventured, her voice trembling, fingers coiling in the sheets.

The figure stilled—she could see his fingers clenching against the wall—and after a moment of dead quiet, turned around.

Rey gasped. Blinked.

And then he was gone.

 _The bond_ , Rey realized, a moment too late. _It’s back_.

* * *

Kylo gasped, water from the shower running down his face, cock growing flaccid in his hand.

 _It was her_ , he thought. _It was Rey._

Despite the fact that she had clouded his thoughts for the better part of the last few days, her sudden appearance had stoked an entirely new fire inside him. He turned the water off, letting himself drip dry for a few moments as he stood there, head in his hands, gasping.

She had _been_ there, legs spread out on the little bench where his towels now sat cleanly folded and waiting, a quilt tucked around her. Was she safe? Did something happen?

Did she _know_ she had done this?

Kylo had felt that shield, shoddily constructed in her mind, that kept their Force connections at bay. It had never been anything of his own creation, only her, and her detestement of any appearance he could make in her new life. _Before we had reconnected on Coruscant, of course._ Now, the corners of this shield had been lifted, then torn off. If he concentrated, focused on that part of his mind he knew held _her_ , he could sense her confusion, her mild apprehension, exhaustion, dimming arousal—

 _No_ , Kylo thought to himself, tearing open the shower door and reaching for a towel, trying to forget her presence there just moments before. His own thoughts must be bleeding over into his. Before he could dwell on that, he blocked out that bond between them, drawing curtains over that spark of light in his mind.

* * *

Early the next morning, Rey woke to sunshine streaming in through the windows, illuminating the room in a blaze of light. One of Apailana’s attendants had let themselves in, and were wheeling in a tray of what Rey could only assume was breakfast. The dishes were covered with large silver trays, but the smells were already wafting to her nose, and as the attendant uncovered each dish, she explained them to Rey; sweet, sticky carbosyrup poured generously over steaming oatmeal, eggs in shades of gold, both scrambled and hard-boiled, nestled against a half-dozen generous slices of bacon, crispy and still sizzling from the grill, and all sided with iced caf and a boat of heavy, sugared milk.

Rey ate contentedly, quilts tucked around her chest, as the attendant cleaned the ‘fresher and then left her be. For a few blissful moments, her mind had the luxury of being completely occupied with eating: scooping mouthfuls of eggs off her plate with thick slices of meat, spoons of creamy oats with drops of syrup oozing across her lips, washed down with sips of bittersweet caf. She didn’t leave behind a single bite, and even allowed herself the sumptuousness of collapsing back against the pillows once she was done, a hand resting listless on her full belly.

She didn’t want to get up, she realized. She knew Leia would want to speak with her, and force her to rehash every waking moment of her time on the _Finalizer_. She dreaded _that_ , certainly, but she dreaded being up at all, walking these halls, Apailana’s attendants and Resistance soldiers alike shooting her silent looks while hushed gossip passed over their lips. Even Finn and Rose were different, in a way that Rey couldn’t place. They were treating her like glass, flighty and fragile, threatening to shatter at any moment. She wouldn’t have minded it if they hadn’t known better—but that was the confusing thing, wasn’t it? Who knew better than Finn that Rey was made of stronger stuff?

Eventually, though, she forced herself up and out of bed, dressing plaintively in the uniform set out for her the day before. In the ‘fresher, she ran a hand through her hair, gathering the strands on instinct into her classic three buns before stopping herself, letting it fall lank around her face.

Sure enough, only moments after she opened the main door to her chambers, an attendant scurried past the tidy throng of people moving through the corridor. “Miss Rey, General Organa has requested your presence—”

“I know,” Rey interrupted, holding up a hand. “Just take me to her.”

The tall ceilings of the mansion seemed to press down on all sides, cavernous windows blocking out the morning light, chandeliers illuminating the wood-paneled walls. Kylo’s words from their ill-fated dinner surfaced from her memory unbidden. _You have no idea what the Resistance is. What hides there, in darkness._ The words sent shivers down her spine. Every officer that passed her, every locked door she passed, sent another question through her mind. _What hides here in darkness? What have I not seen, that lies just in front of my nose?_

The attendant led her past the morning bustle of the estate and towards a quieter wing of Apailana’s home, where Rey saw only servants in plain garb carrying covered dishes or hampers of fabric. Occasionally, she would pass a figure in finer clothing, usually accompanied by their own assistant, and could only assume that the former queen was hosting fellow elites at her estate. _Along with a rebel faction hiding out, carefully transforming into a peacekeeping force._

The pair of them went down a wide, empty hallway, and stopped at a set of double doors adorned with decorative gold paint and polished handles. She merely bowed before Rey, informing her that the general was waiting inside, and scurried off. Rey swallowed, clasping a metal handle in her grasp, and pulled the door open.

If she had thought the wings the Resistance were sheltered in were opulent, it was nothing compared to this. Where the ceiling wasn’t adorned with vibrant, detailed murals of a bright blue sky, adorned with fluffy clouds and posing birds, clear glass filtered in the morning sunlight, warming the room. It could hardly be called a room, though; the dining hall in front of her was wider and longer than the hall that preceded it. A long table made of a dark-colored wood and inlaid with decorative carvings was placed in the center of the room and surrounded by similar, blue-cushioned chairs. Framed paintings and tapestries hung on the walls above side tables with extravagant vases and potted plants, depicting portraits of what Rey could only assume were former queens and distinguished politicians. In the center of the northern wall, displayed above a glittering silver sculpture of a domed building, a triptych of a young woman was potrayed thrice: first on a throne in white paint and a heavy red dress, with her hair in a halo around her head, then in Coruscant’s Senate building, orating from a platform to a packed chamber in a purple robe, and finally lying in a floating casket through the streets of a city, eyes closed and hands resting on her stomach.

“My mother,” Leia piped up from across the room. She sat at the head of the table, in a throne-like wooden seat, with painted gold across its armrests. She looked on the triptych wistfully, her eyes bouncing from the portrait of a young queen, to a confident senator, and finally a dead mother, necklace clasped in her hands. “Padmé Amidala. One of the most prominent politicians to ever serve Naboo. She _fought_ for the people of this planet, and the galaxy, well. But I never knew her; I only remember her as being beautiful, and very sad.” She smiled at the portrait, but a hint of melancholy reached her eyes. “Now I’m not sure if I was just creating memories to fill the hole she had left in my life.” She stole a glance at Apailana, who sat next to her wearing a similar expression. “Still I wonder which planet I belong to—Naboo, or the lost people of Alderaan.”

Rey could only drop her eyes, walking gingerly through the room. Poe was also with them, looking nearly identical to the day she had left Coruscant, hands folded over an idle datapad and seated directly to Leia’s right. Apailana sat next to him, eyes glued to Rey with her chin propped up on the heel of her palm. The general, seemingly presiding over an empty hall, lifted her fingers to gesture to the seat directly left of her. “Please. Sit.”

Rey did as she was bid, settling into the cushions of her chair nervously. She had the unsettling sensation of being interrogated, or tried at court, despite knowing she was surrounded by allies, by the only family she’d ever known. The thought both comforted and terrified her, and she kneaded her hands in her lap to distract herself from that train of thought.

Poe was the first to speak. “We took a look over the information you provided us with earlier. I can’t begin to explain the advantage you’ve given us with this; we have the potential to get out ahead of dozens of First Order initiatives. This saves us a lot of guesswork, cuts potential counterintelligence programs that would have cost us valuable time and money. We’re a step ahead now.” The words were all business, abstract figures Rey couldn’t quite wrap her head around, but Poe’s tone was entirely personal, his eyes low and trained on her. “I don’t know how I could thank you.”

“How any of us could thank you,” Leia finished. “You saved lives with this information, Rey. Because of your bravery, thousands of lives on dozens of planets will never have to know the pain and suffering of tyranny. You saved them.”

 _But I didn’t_ feel _very brave,_ Rey thought to herself, _when I stole from the enemy and scurried away before I could face consequences. I was a coward._ But she didn’t say that. Instead she offered little more than a meek “thank you” and a small bow of her head.

“But you know we need more than that.” Leia steepled her hands on the table, leaning forward. “We have to be vigilant if we’re going to survive this Concordance—and outlive the First Order. One step ahead may not be good enough.”

Rey’s glance shot to Poe, then Apailana, and then Leia again. “I understand.”

“So you know that we need to know everything.” Poe said.

Rey swallowed. “Everything.” She forced a smile at the three of them. “Where do you want me to start?”

And so they went, bouncing back and forth between questions and answers recounting Rey’s time on the Finalizer, on the surface of Rakata Prime. When she had most recently been on the planet, she didn’t know it would have been the last until her arrival back at the Resistance, or else she would have memorized the layout of their base camp, eavesdropped on officers, explored the terrain rather than sticking to the Supreme Leader’s side. When she approached Kylo’s proposal to train her, then to unlock the temple, Leia huffed.

“The Temple of the Ancients,” she murmured. “Luke visited it, once, before he built his training temple.”

“Did he make his way in?” Poe asked, leaning forward, his attention entirely captured by the general.

Leia shook her head, eyes firmly lost in memories. “He never said, but… I know he didn’t. He only told me that the energy there was dark, and powerful, and not something he would ever dare to breach.” She turned her attention to Rey. “You must know that no matter what happens, you cannot go inside that temple. Don’t open it, don’t enter it—don’t _look_ at it unless you have to. I don’t know what kind of plans the Supreme Leader has for it, but circumvent them if you can.”

 _Supreme Leader_. The cold apathy of those words in her mouth, the harsh asceticism of it, sent shivers down Rey’s spine. She bit back his name on her tongue, instead nodding again. “I’ll try.” _Ben. His name is Ben Solo, and he’s your son._

Leia nodded. “So after the temple…”

Rey racked her mind for what came next. “I told him no—I was angry, too—and stormed off. The planet was _feeding_ my anger. I know that now, now that I’ve left.” _I thought I was creating all that rage, all on my own, but I was wrong. I was just lonely, and afraid, and the Force turned it all into anger. It did that for us both._ “I was trekking through the forest alone when I was attacked.”

Apailana started. “Attacked?”

“Well—it was a surprise attack. I was fine. Someone just jumped out at me.”

“What kind of someone?” Poe chimed in.

“They were hooded—their clothes were roughspun, handmade. And all they were armed with was a spear.”

A hush fell over her audience, and Poe turned visibly to meet Leia’s eyes, an eyebrow raised. Leia only pursed her lips in response. The exchange happened in silence, but Rey could practically hear the conversation, hidden in miniscule body language, between them.

“Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?” Rey finally asked, a knife cutting through the tension.

Leia turned back to Rey. “Was this—person ever mentioned to you again?”

“Yes—it turns out the base camp was attacked by an insurgent group called the Children of the One. Kylo told me this over dinner, and...“ she trailed off, the pieces slowly coming together as Leia and Poe shared another glance. “And he told me they were funded by the Resistance.”

The dead silence just moments before was nothing compared to the quiet at the table now. None of them could meet Rey’s eyes— Leia and Poe were facing each other, eyes grazing absently over the room’s decor—while Apailana picked at her fingernails.

A quiet anger, burning like a flame on a wick, ignited in her belly. It was unlike anything else she’d felt before, unlike that hot, vibrant fury on Rakata Prime, or even the simmering rage she had felt building in her on Ahch-To. It sat dormant, in the pit of her stomach, focused and unwavering.

“Is it true?” She asked, breaking the silence. It shocked her how calm she sounded, how little her voice shook. It was a question, not a demand.

Leia finally met her eyes. “Once we knew the location of the First Order’s new capital, we thought we might be able to plan a preemptive attack. Organizing an assault from the Resistance was out of the question—we had just signed peace terms that had saved our lives, and brandishing rebellion logos on their territory, just weeks later, would have meant certain death.” Leia swallowed, folded and unfolded her hands. “So, we had to look at alternatives. Sponsoring an attack without having our names directly attached seemed like the safest option. By the time we realized our pickings were slim, it was too late. We had summoned the Children to negotiations, and they wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“So you sent them to a slaughter.”

She was angry, just not for the reasons she thought. A thousand different responses ran through her mind, but she could only stick to one.

“They had spears.” Rey’s voice was flat. “You gave them _spears_.”

Apailana was keeping her eyes trained, albeit nervously, on Leia, while Poe seemed to want to be anywhere but this conversation.

Leia’s voice was barely above a whisper. “We had no choice.”

Rey turned her body towards the general, all of her attention and rage focused on her. “I gave you the benefit of the doubt. When Kylo told me that it might have been you, I wanted to laugh. I didn’t want to believe him. I told him he was being ridiculous.” She paused, shifted her gaze to Poe, then Apailana. “I told him that I knew the Resistance was good. That they—that _you_ —were a force for good. I told him that. And now I’m not sure what the truth is.”

Rey—” Poe began, but Leia silenced him with a lift of her hand.

“We’re surviving. We don’t have the luxury of selecting our morals.”

“Then what is this?” Rey replied, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “What are you fighting for? The survival of the galaxy, or just yourselves?”

The question seemed to take Leia off guard. Her mouth was open, preparing to respond, but she stopped short.

Rey didn’t know why she was here, why she had decided to come here. After dinner with Kylo, she had felt alone, afraid. She had needed to remind herself who she was doing this for. But now… now, she wasn’t sure.

“I think I’d like to leave.” Rey heard herself say. She didn’t realize her decision had been made until she spoke, but now her resolve built with each passing moment. “I’ve already been away too long.”

If anyone else at the table felt inclined to protest, they didn’t show it. “Of course,” Leia replied, her voice hollow. Poe nodded mutely. Apailana sat in silence, eyes glued to a spot of wood on the tabletop.

“Well, then.” Rey stood, chair creaking as she pulled back from the table. An awkward tension settled over the group, but she didn’t look back to watch it persist. It wasn’t until she was up and making her way towards the main doors, that she felt that urge to turn around, to take back everything she had said, forget about it all and rejoin their ranks. _Rejoin my family_.

But she couldn't. Somehow she knew she could never turn back.

So she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, the gap between her and them widening as she left her history behind.

The corridors leading to the estate’s landing dock weren’t as crowded as they had been before. Most of the officers working here were probably at their stations, or the mess hall, adhering strictly to the schedules imposed on them. Rey missed that, she realized, that feeling of divine purpose leading one routine to the next, leading endlessly towards an unreachable goal.

Miraculously, Finn was working by the docks, surrounded by a smattering of pilots with a datapad in hand. He barked out orders by the bay doors, displaying an array of probe droids on a hologram for them to see. Rey hung back, catching Finn’s eyes but not daring to interrupt.

He dismissed the squadron a few moments later, tucking his datapad under his arm as he strode over to meet her with an innocent smile on his face. “Hey, I was hoping to catch you earlier. Just finished up an intel report and then I was heading your way.” He must have noticed her expression, despite her efforts to hide it, because his brow furrowed, mouth dipping into a frown. “Is everything okay?”

Rey wanted to smile, assure him everything was okay, but the words were caught in her throat, threatening to be chased by tears. “I just… I have to get back.”

“Back to where?” The dip in Finn’s tone told her he already knew.

“I have a job to do. And it’s not here.” She met his eyes, a sad smile tracing her lips. “I’m sorry, Finn.”

A pause stretched between them, an unscalable chasm Rey thought would go on forever. Finn looked ready to protest, throw down his datapad and tell her no, she’s staying here, but a moment later, he swallowed, composed himself. “I understand.”

The words stung, even though they had been what she was hoping for. _Understanding_. But somehow it still broke her heart. _We’re growing up,_ Rey realized faintly. _We’re not the hapless runaways that met on Niima Outpost anymore._

Still, against her better judgment, she closed the distance between them and folded herself against her friend’s midsection, arms reaching around to grasp onto his shoulders and pin herself there. Finn returned the hug tentatively, and then with an assurance and comfort Rey felt permeate into her skin, warming her in a way the sands of Jakku never could. “I’ll miss you,” Finn murmured into her hair.

After a few moments, the pair pulled back, the chasm between them reconstructing itself. “I’ll miss you, too.” She smiled at him, and he smiled back. Then his datapad beeped, the holoscreen lighting up, and Finn took a step back.

“I have to go.”

“Yeah.” Rey swallowed. “Me too.”

He turned to go, already typing out a response on the screen, and before she could follow him, Rey led herself out of the bay doors and into the afternoon sunshine, toward the TIE fighter that would bring her away from this place, and back to what she knew.

* * *

After the TIE’s jump from hyperspace, the sight of the _Finalizer_ , still in the same coordinates, brought a sigh of relief to Rey’s lips. She knew Kylo wouldn’t leave her, somehow. But the idea of being stuck between two people she wanted to trust—but just couldn’t— scared her more than she’d like to admit.

Returning on board was just as easy as escaping; the hangar bay was open and empty, allowing her to slip in and make a hasty landing without hostile detection. The halls were as empty as the day she’d left; she didn’t pass a single soul on the way from the hangar to her room, nearly thirty floors up. It took a few minutes to readjust to the star Destroyer, especially after the gilded wood and polished glass of Apailana’s mansion. But once she got the hang of it, recollecting things like the code to the bay doors, the floor she lived on, it felt familiar, like—

 _Like home,_ Rey realized. _It feels like I’m home._

When the door to her quarters whirred open, she expected it to be empty, her bed freshly made and ready for her to collapse on. Instead, she recognized someone, hunched over, perched on the foot of her bed.

 _Kylo_.

He must have heard her come in, because his head was turned towards the door, his profile outlined to her by the lowlight in the room. A moment later, he shifted in place, and she saw the whole of his face, painted in soft shades of black and white. Dark circles had accrued under his eyes, emphasized by pale skin and that pink scar, and she could see his lips tremble against the contrast of the faint backlight. Still, she wasn’t prepared for the shock of relief, the shock of _warmth_ that flooded through her at the sight of him, however broken, waning in her chambers. A part of her remembered, with a tint of embarrassment, the sight of him in her quarters, but she shoved that down, chalked it up to a misremembrance.

“You’re back.” His words were more an exhale of breath than a sentence.

She could only nod in response, before her voice finally came to her. “I’m sorry, I—”

“No,” Kylo interrupted, standing to face her. “Don’t— I should be the one apologizing. I was rude, and crass, and—”

“We both were,” Rey interrupted, as they fumbled through their conversation. “But I shouldn’t have gone away.”

Kylo looked like he might protest again, but he stopped himself, letting the silence persist between them.

“I’m sorry” was all he said, and she knew he wasn’t talking about their argument over dinner.

She could only shake her head, plastering on a smile, but tears still threatened at the corners of her eyes, her brow furrowing. “It’s fine.” Her vision was clouding now, lips pursing in an attempt to keep her cheeks dry.

“I didn’t _want_ to be right— not about that—”

Rey never heard the end of that sentence, because before he could finish she was walking towards him, swiftly closing the distance that kept them apart, and wrapping her arms around him. He must have been shocked at this, because for a moment he only stood frozen in her embrace, arms locked at his sides, while she buried her face in his chest. _This was a mistake_ , she thought initially, but somehow she didn’t care. _I’ve made a handful of mistakes lately. This one will hurt the least._ But then, as if by miracle, Kylo’s arms locked around her, corded muscle pressing gently against her back, pressing her to him. She thought that hugging him might make her feel better, keep the tears from falling, but for some reason this only made them flow faster. She could feel his heart beat against her cheek, her tears saturating the soft cloth of his doublet.

“I thought you might be injured.” She feel Kylo swallow against her, composing himself. “Or worse.”

Rey forced out a laugh. “Would that be so terrible?”

“More terrible than you can imagine.”

Her original words had been a jest, but Kylo had heard them at face value. She couldn’t decide if that scared her, or brought her solace. Regardless, she held him tighter.

 _I’m sorry._ She couldn’t bring herself to say it again; she didn’t think it would be enough, _ever_ be enough. Still, the apology rang through her head, and she knew that Kylo heard it.

And as he held her to his chest, she knew that he was beginning to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I first just wanna apologize for the month-long delay between chapters here. The start of my (second-to-last!) semester happened and threw my posting schedule out of whack, but now I'm hoping to update **every other week** from now on. Thanks for sticking around and leaving such kind comments while I was away; it seriously means the world to me.
> 
> P.S. - I found myself listening to TEOL over and over while writing this, and just thought the tone fit so well, so it's this chapter's track. I don't know how often I'll be adding playlist tracks to chapters (really just depends on if a song clicks to me) but if you like the addition let me know!! As always thank you all so so much for reading. ♡


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He could feel the _imbalance_ in her, that uneasy feeling that can only resonate in someone who knows the sentiment well. She felt lost, unsure of where to turn, the rug pulled out from under her. And worse yet, that lingering embarrassment, and shame: was she wrong to have not seen this coming? Was she the fool for expecting the best in someone, or vicious for expecting nothing less?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's been a while!! As usual, I want to start off apologizing for the delay between chapters. I can't make any promises for the next one but I'm hoping the gap between chapters from here on out is much smaller. I really did not realize when I started this that I would be on a GRRM level of updating so sorry for that.  
> Special shoutout to Tamara for beta'ing this chapter for me!! Please go read [starstuff](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15971054/chapters/37252994) by her, it's so so wonderful (and also go yell at her because I read this on the day I planned finishing this chapter but then couldn't because her fic ruined me that badly).  
> Alrighty without further ado, enjoy!!

Since Rey’s arrival back on the _Finalizer_ , things had been markedly less eventful.

Kylo’s mood, for instance, had significantly improved; he wanted to chalk it up to improved relations between him and his officers, but he knew there was more to it than that. The day after she had come back— finding him in her bedroom, to his embarrassment— their landing party had returned to Rakata’s surface as normal. Kylo had forgone the excursions during the time Rey had been absent, citing important business only a Supreme Leader could tend to, and had spent most of his time searching for incoming ships on the computers in his private chambers.

After her return, Kylo had excused himself from Rey’s quarters, asking no questions and quashing any whiff of suspicion about her in his mind. He could tell she was shaken by wherever she had gone, and whatever she had seen, but he didn’t pry. The tension that had built up during their ill-fated dinner was seemingly forgotten upon her return, melting away in that embrace, something he never would have expected but still welcomed. He tried to shove away memories of Rey, quilts pulled up to her chest, appearing an arm’s length away from his ‘fresher, as he strode through her door, and hoped that she had forgotten, too. A voice in his head that reminded Kylo eerily of Snoke said that this was weakness, folly; a powerful Supreme Leader would imprison the liaison, dress her down with a slew of clauses she’d violated in the Concordance by leaving. He could even denounce the treaty, claim it null and voided by her actions, and declare war on the Resistance, the entire New Republic, attacking planet after planet until there was nothing left but Kylo and his Order.

But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He had gone to Coruscant for a reason, signed a spineless Concordance for a reason. It was easier to pretend that nothing had happened. Easier in every way.

He appeared at her door the next morning on their usual schedule. There had been an internal conflict within him all morning about whether or not he should expect her on the planet’s surface, but in the end he figured it was worth a shot. And when her door whizzed open, she was as dressed and ready as she’d ever been, a hint of a smile even twitching at her lips. The only difference he’d been able to spot was a smudge of darkness under her now-bloodshot eyes.

But Rey’s mood only worsened as the day pressed on. Kylo could tell— could _feel_ — she was grinning and bearing it as best she could, trying to ignore whatever had happened press on despite it. _It’s in her blood_ , he thought to himself, as he watched her from across the camp, her eyes grazing long leaves of the trees shading them both. _She’s never known anything else._

Eventually, they found themselves alone, charting on foot towards a clear patch of grass at the request of one of the junior officers. A swath of land previously untouched was now reportedly burnt and razed, according to the First Order’s scanners. Rey had been the one to volunteer to investigate, and then Kylo found himself joining her, citing his position as Supreme Leader as grounds for leading any sort of potentially dangerous scouting trip. He and Rey both knew there was no threat, though; in truth, he hardly knew what compelled him to her side. He could only blame a twinging feeling in the pit of his stomach that was becoming all too familiar. But now here they stood, lightsabers at their hips, trekking through tall grass in the general direction of where the officer assumed the new clearing was.

Though Kylo was expecting bad news— proof of Children camping, construction plans foiled, maybe— he held no urgency or tension in the way he walked, and neither did Rey. The air was humid and still, only the occasional breeze stirring the waist-high grass surrounding them. For once, Rey led Kylo— claiming superior navigation skills that Kylo was wont to protest, yet didn’t. He knew his eyes should be on the horizon, on the landscape around him, keeping alert for any potential threats, but instead his gaze gravitated towards her form, just a few meters ahead of him. She kept her head down, carefully watching where her footsteps landed, slender fingers brushing through reedy blades of grass. 

It fascinated Kylo to witness her, even in the most simple form of her existence—but it wasn’t simple, was it? She did little more than walk, occasionally turn her head skyward to take in the clouds, the trees around them, but he could feel that undercurrent of tension, of abject misery, running beneath her skin. The bond had reopened between them, and now her own emotions ran through his mind like a churning river, sweeping his own thoughts along with it. He could feel the _imbalance_ in her, that uneasy feeling that can only resonate in someone who knows the sentiment well. She felt lost, unsure of where to turn, the rug pulled out from under her. And worse yet, that lingering embarrassment, and shame: was she wrong to have not seen this coming? Was she the fool for expecting the best in someone, or vicious for expecting nothing less?

Kylo didn’t know what it meant—any of it. He couldn’t know what _exactly_ she was thinking about. Sure, he had devised a few theories about where she’d run off to for the last few days, but they were just that— theories. All he knew was that she was feeling this way, and he knew because now he could feel it too—that aching loneliness, the feeling of something sturdier than the ground beneath your feet suddenly crumbling, leaving you in the limbo of purgatory. 

And worst of all, it wasn’t foreign or unfamiliar to him; he could never forget the searing pain of betrayal, like lightning striking through him, when he awoke to his master and uncle standing above him, lightsaber ignited with the killshot primed. It wasn’t foreign to her, either. Luke Skywalker had slighted them both, promised care and belonging but delivered only heartbreak, confusion. Chaos. Distantly, he remembered her final appearance in his quarters on the _Supremacy_ , hand outstretched, telling him he wasn’t alone. The thought of her pain—their shared pain—sent a flare of indignation through him, blind anger he had to fight to clamp down on.

Everything in him shouted to stride forward, to take her hand and tell her it was okay, the same way she had told him last night. _You’re not alone._ The image of it, fingers folding against one another, hands fitting together like puzzle pieces, imprinted on his mind, on his eyes like a flash of light, fading slow. But he couldn’t—he knew that, with blinding clarity. She had come to him, last night—come to the _Finalizer_ , found him waiting in her room. He hadn’t risked hunting her, shooting down her ship, forcing her back to him. He had waited. And in the end, it had paid off.

 _Maybe I’ve learned something from her after all._ Kylo smothered a smirk, a rise of bitter humor swelling within him. _Waiting._

After what felt like hours of walking through the glaring midday sun, filtering down through thin leaves, they came upon the clearing. Rey looked back once, a finger to her lips, and then pushed a branch of shrubbery aside, revealing a field of brown grass long since burned. Charred remains of makeshift tents—little more than scraps of cloth draped over sticks and stones—had collapsed on dead grass and black dirt. Crude weapon racks, made of wood plucked from the treeline, were marred with gray ash and black markings, designating the spots where flames had licked through. He could see no bodies, only a dark, unmoving lump of flesh no bigger than his fist, a stone’s throw from where he stood. _Must have been a rodent, caught in the flames._ Besides these scant remains, there was no trace of any sentient life.

They both knew what this was, what it had been before a fire had destroyed it: _A camp for the Children_. He raised his head to gauge her reaction, but she was still turned away, her profile outlined against the midday horizon—short nose, full elegant lips—her eyes a new kind of lost as she scanned over the remains of the enemy’s wrecked home.

 _She’s afraid for them_ , he realized, passively skimming through the thoughts she was letting leak through the bond. _She doesn’t want any more carnage, or destruction_. _I wish I could give that to her._ This new sentiment mixed with the old one, that pang of regret, and longing, and loss.

Suddenly, Rey stopped, and Kylo was afraid she had heard his own thoughts, felt his own feelings, seen that distant silhouette of hands entwined, still fading in his mind. But then she turned, and there was no hint of recognition or suspicion on her face. She had been as adrift in her thoughts as Kylo had been by his.

She stepped forward, slowly, closing the distance between them until she was an arm’s reach away. 

“You’re going to slaughter those Children, aren’t you?”

It was like a ball of steel had dropped clean through him—he barely had the chance to register the slick sheen of his dread before it was replaced by brooding misery. She hadn’t presented the implication out loud, but she hadn’t needed to; they both knew what she was asking. _Mercy. Clemency for a handful of warriors, fighting for their own survival._ The one thing he couldn’t give, the one thing he couldn’t do. 

It was the First Order’s pyramid, the chain of command to which they clung, that allowed him to maintain his position as Supreme Leader. It started at the top, with him, and fanned out to encompass the slew of officers that served beneath him. So long as they maintained that order, that hierarchy, Kylo could keep the grip steady on his position. But Force help him if he could overturn that hierarchy, break the chain. He could best any one of them, if taken alone, but together they were a power he could never anticipate, or defeat, singlehandedly. The Force was an advantage, but not one he could use to bring an entire military to heel.

He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her, at that dismal dinner, that he couldn’t overstep the authority of his lower officers. Even now, sparing the lives of a militant group, albeit one armed with little more than spears, would do more than raise a few eyebrows. He’d been targeted with suspicion from the moment he’d woken in the ruined throne room of the _Supremacy_ , Hux standing over him and demanding answers. It hadn’t ended since.

Now, Rey stood just as close to him, her eyes wiped clean of any emotion that wasn’t pleading, pure desire for the one answer she _needed_ from him. And yet, lingering in the crinkle of her nose, the crease of her brow, was that stark disappointment, already primed for the moment when he would let her down for the upteenth time. For some awful, gut-wrenching reason, that emboldened him, spurring the sick and terrible part of him that had fallen to the dark side, that woke up and kept falling, every day. It was like firing a blaster bolt, a simple press of a button, knowing that destruction would follow in its wake and still pulling the trigger.

Kylo swallowed, lips pressing into a thin line.“It’s outside my jurisdiction.”

He at least had the decency to look away, spare himself the surge of defeat washing over her features. He keeps his eyes trained on a burnt blade of grass, just a few steps away.

At first she did nothing— no breathing, no talking, no sign of movement. She stood there, feet from him; he kept the toes of her boots in his peripheral vision. Then her fists balled up, an indignant sigh barrelling through her nose, hot and angry. Her mouth opened, a voice with no words, scrabbling for the right response to _that_ — to something so completely terrible it made his own stomach drop. _I did that_.

Eventually, she must have realized that there _was_ nothing she could say to that, because her mouth closed; the sound stopped. The world around them stilled for just a moment. Kylo could _feel_ the split second of time where he could have gone back, promised her he’d spare them, damn the First Order. But then it passed; time always continued its steady march forward. 

Expression hardening, Rey stomped past him in a hurry, trodding through dead grass back towards the treeline. Kylo didn’t follow.

Any ground he had regained, any leeway he’d made with her, was lost in one fell swoop. Any hope of growing closer, of finding _something_ with her, gone. They were adversaries again, as they always had been—maybe always would be.

Maybe. Still, that foolish shred of hope clung to his soul like a leech, sucking him dry.

His knees gave out without warning, bringing him down to the soil. A handful of black dirt sifted through his gloved his fingers as his first gathered in the ground.

_What am I going to do?_

***

Development of the capital had been progressing smoothly so far despite Kylo’s absence and inattention. Though his mind had mostly been filled with thoughts of Rey, lower strata of command had seemingly gone on fine without his supervision, with the first primary government buildings slated to begin construction within the next few day cycles.

This inattention was apparently still displeasing to Hux, who cornered him that same night.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or am I going to have to prod it out of you?” Hux seethed, with a smidge of authority. “The girl is gone for two days—”

“She was unwell, Hux.”

“I checked the medbay records. No droids reported any appearance of our _designated liaison_.” The words dripped with disdain.

Kylo wasn’t in a particularly patient mood to begin with, and Hux’s lack of respect or honorifics rubbed salt in his wounds. So he rounded on him. “I don’t think generals normally find themselves fit to question the strategies of their Supreme Leader. Or have you forgotten the chain of command, _General_?”

Because, in that way, Kylo had no room for weakness. No room for a mistake, or feint, or even a respite. He knew that Hux would kill for this job— if he hadn’t already. He would orchestrate a coup, go all in and risk everything save his own life to topple Ren’s regime. 

(Even on that note, Kylo was unsure. He wasn’t convinced that Hux wouldn’t die just to take his enemies down with him.)

He could catch him, too— Hux was a snake, but Kylo had seized advantage through the Force more than a few times. He just needed to be paying attention, looking in the right places at the right times. But with Rey in his life again, he’d found his attention drifting. _Unacceptable_.

Kylo figured he could have just had Hux killed by now, but as remiss as he would be to admit it, Hux was useful. He had connections with lower stratas of control, whole swaths of officers the general had shaken hands with and guided through training exercises while Kylo had been off meditating on the dark side or groveling to Snoke. So, he had elected to keep the sniveling general around to carry out his bidding, for however long their tenuous relationship could last.

“I’m not asking for every minute detail, _Supreme Leader_. But high command has noticed that your absence from the Rakata expeditions correlates with that of the liaison’s. I cannot give them answers if I don’t have them myself.”

To his credit, Hux’s sentiment seemed genuine, even if he couldn’t keep the annoyed bite out of his voice. He didn’t _want_ the chain of command to topple, at least not right now. For one crystalline moment, their goals were aligned.

Kylo’s left hand reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, his eyes screwed shut in weary exasperation. “I was working on important business I couldn’t walk away from— Rey left on my orders to investigate a claim I had received through my personal comlink.” The lie spun itself as he continued to speak. “On the advice of said claim, we opted to have no communication during the mission. Even the officers working the bay she left from didn’t know—I had to belay protocol personally following her departure.”

Hux waited patiently until Kylo was done, and then waited a few moments more, letting Kylo’s last words hang in the air between them. He sighed, crossed his arms, sighed again. Then he spoke. 

“I’m not sure if you’re telling the truth.”

“It shouldn’t matter—it _doesn’t_ matter,” Kylo responded instantly, teeth gritting to hold his tongue. “I’m your superior officer—your Leader. I don’t need your trust—all I need is your cooperation.” He might have still been lying; Kylo knew he didn’t want Hux’s trust, but a sick feeling inside him knew it might be vital. _I can’t survive my own Order without him_ , he realized, clarity like a punch to his gut. Inside him, darkness reared its head, emerging hotly from a bottomless mire before Kylo rammed it down hastily.

Hux didn’t seem any happier receiving this response than Kylo was giving it. Still, he clenched his jaw, gave a tight smile that turned his eyes to slits, and gave an infinitesimal bow. “Then my cooperation you shall have, Supreme Leader.” His back stiff as ice, he turned on a heel and left Kylo standing alone in the corridor, resisting the urge to shake off his prickling gooseflesh. _He isn’t done. I can only hope that someone else will finish him off before he can get to me._

***

The next morning, Rey woke to a start.

She had been dreaming of Ahch-To, of the cave beneath the island. She had knelt at its entrance, hands gripping the thick grasses covering hard stone, listening to a soft, distant cry that never ended. It was in a Jedi language she couldn’t decipher—only a hint of intuition made her conclude the cry was Jedi in nature at all. She didn’t know how long she knelt there, fingers threading through black weeds, silent and sole witness to the sound that made its way up through the water. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine it speaking straight to her—painting the images of a planet, mountains, a dark monolith, roiling storm clouds on her eyelids. She didn’t know what any of it meant, but drank it in regardless, letting it wash over her. 

At one moment, she had heard a quiet shuffling, just to her left, and when she looked over Kylo was standing on the other side of the entrance, leaning up against the tangled moss. She couldn’t tell if he had been there as long as she had, but a spike of indignant wrath ran through her skin regardless, along with the memory of their last conversation in the burnt camp. He only kept his eyes on her, face devoid of emotion. Just when he opened his mouth to speak, Rey was inexplicably pulled into the entrance, the same way she had been on Ahch-To, all those months ago—though she never hit the water. She fell, and fell and fell and _fell_ , until she was jolted from the dream. 

After Rey took a moment to catch her breath and gain her bearings, she noticed her datapad, discarded on the side table next to her bed, beeping erratically. She propped herself up on her elbows, running a hand through her lank hair as she reached for the datapad to mute the message.

_URGENT COMMUNIQUÉ: from SUPREME LEADER KYLO REN_

She frowned, staring down at the holoscreen. It was too early in the morning for her to have been summoned for an expedition down to the planet; the sun wouldn’t rise on the surface for hours. It could just be Ren summoning her to plead for forgiveness for his earlier misstep, or to finally take her to task for disobeying orders and violating the Concordance. She didn’t particularly _want_ to open the message, and yet…

With a tap of her finger, the message expanded, taking up most of the holoscreen. 

_FOR IMMEDIATE TRANSMISSION:_

_Upon receiving this message please report to the bridge for emergency briefing._

Mere seconds after she had skimmed the lone sentence in the message, the screen blinked once, and the datapad returned to its primary settings, erasing the file. She frowned, considering her options. The word _emergency_ struck a nerve with her, along with the significant urgency that accompanied the message. Maybe something was wrong? 

_If I don’t go, he’ll probably send a legion of stormtroopers just to drag me there, kicking and screaming._ She smirked at the image as she pushed back her blankets and set to dressing.

A handful of minutes later she was riding the turbolift down to the bridge, her saberstaff in its usual place at her waist, worrying at her bottom lip. _What could possibly be an emergency at this hour?_ She had chosen to ignore the small voice in her head that insisted Ren was lying, that he was summoning her to his side to train in the ways of the dark side. _If there is a threat_ — _if anything has gone wrong, it will only get worse if I continue to distrust and bicker with the man who is supposed to be my partner._ Her mind formed that last word before she could stop it, before she could think of any other, better descriptor for what they were. But even as she cringed internally, a deeper part of her relaxed; she had acknowledged an unspeakable truth that had plagued her for the better part of her time here. _Maybe even before that. Maybe I knew even on Ahch-To. Maybe before._

The turbolift slowed, the whine of the engines pitching down as Rey approached her destination. When the doors slid open, the bridge was mostly empty, only a few essential personnel manning consoles and computers to keep the ship floating above Rakata Prime. Kylo and a pair of lower officers Rey couldn’t recognize stood clustered by the main viewport, heads bent forward in hushed discussion. As she moved toward them, fists clenching and unclenching, Rey _noticed_ Kylo. His profile was outlined against the starfield, imposing form towering over his officers, dwarfing even the curve of the planet below him—a mere sliver in the corner of the viewport. His hair, the color of a starless night, hung lank around his face, framing the pallid white of his skin in a way that made Rey’s breath catch in her throat. His gaze, passive but attentive, quietly scrutinized the officers, seemingly stripping them down with a look coated in shades of warm brown. When he heard her approach, his eyes gravitated towards her. _A planet, turning its face to the sun, greeting the morning not with tedium or apathy, but with warm recognition, acknowledgement that death would have served it otherwise._

When she was close enough, Kylo dismissed the officers with a wave of his gloved hand and turned to face the viewport. Rey had no choice but to stop next to him, crossing her arms and peeking up at him as she mirrored his stance. 

“You _summoned_ me?”

Kylo ignored the bite in her voice. “We received a distress signal from somewhere in Wild Space. Communications officers managed to trace the signal to the Chrelythiumn system, but that’s as specific as they could get. We don’t know if it’s come from a ship, or a planet, or what.”

Rey frowned. “Well, what does it say?”

“That’s why I called you.” Kylo turned away from the viewport then, facing her. “Why the communications executive called me. The message is in an ancient Jedi language. I checked Imperial records, and there’s no mention of this sort of dialect anywhere—probably thanks to Palpatine wiping most of the registers from the Jedi temple. This is something only a Force user could competently investigate.”

“It _could_ just be a malfunctioning ship, replaying a distress code its dying captain broadcast centuries ago.” Rey uncrossed her arms, tugging at the hem of one of her arm wraps. She was searching for an explanation, something to nullify the nagging in the pit of her stomach. But when she made eye contact with Kylo again, she could tell he understood. That he had done the same, felt the same.

“It warrants inspection,” he countered. “Unless…”

The offer lay unspoken, but Rey knew exactly what he was implying. _Come with me unless you can’t._ It stirred her for a reason Rey could not explain. When she reached into her own mind, towards the live wire that was their reopened bond— which she had dutifully been ignoring since yesterday—her suspicions were confirmed.

“No, you’re right,” she finally replied. “I’ll come with you.”

Kylo nodded, turning his head back to the viewport to gaze out among the stars. “It will just be the two of us. We leave within the hour.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a few links to check out to prepare you for the next few chapters... ( **don't click if you want to go in!!** very minor spoilers ahead. not required reading/viewing, just a suggestion)  
> [Chrelythiumn System](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Chrelythiumn_system)  
>  I would also recommend watching these [Clone Wars episodes](https://www3.fmovies.to/film/star-wars-the-clone-wars-3.nk88/q734kj) (15 through 17 of Season 3) to get some background knowledge on what's coming up next. These next few chapters coming up are the bedrock of the concept that originally inspired this fic; everything else before has just been the setup to this. So buckle up lmfao  
> **  
> As always thanks so much for reading!! Feel free to leave a comment if you enjoyed (ps: I don't have access to my twitter @ben69solo at the moment; so in the meantime I'll be most active on my [tumblr](https://ben69solo.tumblr.com)). Love you all!! ♡


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It wasn’t the thought of an unknown signal that scared her, or the danger that might lay ahead, but the blind vastness of it all— years spent on the small, banal wasteland of Jakku hadn’t prepared her for the infinity of the galaxy, the universe that lay beyond. And yet her mind still gravitated towards another endless void she didn’t have the first idea on how to navigate— her relationship with the man who piloted their ship._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the thousandth time for the insane delay in uploading!! Life, unfortunately, comes before fic, and this project had to take a backseat for a few weeks. If you're still sticking with me after a month-plus hiatus from this work, I appreciate you so so much. Now that I'm done with school for the month and have a steady work schedule I'm hoping to have the end of this arc finished by early January!
> 
> As always thank you to the lovely [Tamara](https://twitter.com/voicedimplosive) for her beta of this chapter. I seriously cannot emphasize how helpful this girl is in making this fic better and better. Please go read her amazing works if you haven't already!

Kylo had chosen to take his own command shuttle to the Chrelythiumn system; the ship was heavily armored, with slender turrets attached to the wings and cannons below the cockpit. It was enough to take out a small army, and Rey marveled at the sight of it as they strode through the empty hangar, accompanied only by General Hux at Kylo’s left. From his right, Rey admired the sleek black of the ship’s wings, the tips tapering up to the ceiling, slender cockpit wedged in between. _I hope it takes two to fly; if I’m simply tasked with taking up space while the Supreme Leader shoots us into hyperspace, I may die of boredom._ It was unfair that she might not be able to pilot such a beautiful ship herself.

“Will you be alerting us upon your arrival in the system?” Hux piped in next to Kylo, walking quickly to keep up with his Supreme Leader.

“The whims of Wild Space are hard to predict; I’m expecting some sort of interference. Electrical storms are common in that area,” Kylo explained. “Don’t expect any communication until we return. As long as the _Finalizer_ doesn’t leave Rakata’s orbit, our return journey should be smooth and uneventful.”

Hux opened his mouth as if to protest then thought better of it, nodding.

Finally they arrived next to the ship’s loading dock; a crate of necessary supplies for a short journey had already been loaded on, and was tucked into a storage compartment up on the ramp. Kylo turned to Hux abruptly; Rey was forced to witness their quiet conversation from over the Supreme Leader’s shoulder.

“While I’m gone, command of the _Finalizer_ is yours,” Kylo dictated to his subordinate, his voice low and gravelly. “If I return and find so much as a maintenance record out of place, it will be on your head. I advise you to keep your wits about you.” He took a step towards Hux, who shrank back on instinct, and Rey couldn’t help but take a step back. “Do you understand?”

With Kylo towering over him, Hux snuck a glance at Rey, over his commander’s shoulder. She started at their shared eye contact, and a mute understanding passed between them. Even with Kylo Ren breathing down his neck, demanding his subservience, and a Jedi staring him down, Hux managed a smirk, a light like sparking flint coming to life in his eyes.

“Of course, Supreme Leader.”

Not another word passed between them. Kylo turned on his heel towards Rey and extended an arm, swathed in layers of deep black, towards the open ramp leading into the cockpit. Rey met his eyes— still that warm brown, with no hint of deceit or deception— and then, with a final sweeping glance around the calm, motionless hangar, she stepped onboard.

Up the ramp and through a set of durasteel doors, Rey encountered the cockpit— not lavishly ornamented or adorned, but still beautiful in its simplicity, equipped and polished. The room’s sole viewport— a strip of transparisteel exposing the front wall— displayed the hangar, tinted black. Rey could see Hux walking away, annoyance leaking from his posture as he made his way back toward the main corridors, datapad already in hand. _That man has little to fear and less to lose_ , she thought to herself, a silent reminder to watch herself— and Kylo— around him.

The main console, stacked against the viewport, had glowing red displays, throwing the entire room in shades of crimson. When Rey looked down at her own skin, it was the color of blood, or perhaps a blooming flower. Consoles lined the side walls as well, with seats accompanying the desks or command stations, and a single seat in the center of the room, no doubt reserved for the commanding officer on board while a full crew was present.

Rey felt Kylo’s presence behind her, like a shadow, tracking her every move. _Not out of fear or suspicion,_ she found herself pondering blindly, _but out of adulation, or respect._ She could sense his eyes roving over her position in the cockpit, watching her fingers curl into the tight leather of the command chair, captivated with her silent observation of his shuttle.

Rey turned her head towards Kylo, still lurking in the back. “It’s a beautiful ship,” she confessed, hoping he could hear the honesty in her voice. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

For an instant, Kylo’s face softened, eyes alight with the rapture of praise and mutual appreciation for a well-made ship. Then, as if remembering his place, his gaze returned to normal, features schooled into an indifferent mask. He stepped forward, his cape trailing slightly behind. “You’ve been on it before, you know.”

Rey was puzzled. “I have?”

He nodded in response, swallowing thickly. “Before I took you onto Starkiller. For… interrogation.”

Rey couldn’t find the words to respond. A quiet “oh” was all she could muster. When Kylo looked away, his eyes flitting nervously around the small cockpit, she could almost feel the regret, the apology bitten back. _The last time I was here, I was unconscious. At the mercy of a man I thought was a monster. Now…_

She turned abruptly, striding forward and keeping her eyes glued on the viewport. “Shall we?” It was hard to keep the strain out of her voice, but after a long moment Kylo followed her, gesturing to the leftmost computer station.

“I can pilot,” he said to her, taking the main seat and warming up the engine and flight controls. “We won’t need a gunner; I’ll transmit you the Chrylenthiumn system’s coordinates, and you’ll take us to hyperspace.”

The exchange, direct as it was, was strangely comforting to Rey: a simple set of instructions she could easily follow. She took the seat next to Kylo, at the navigation systems, as he began firing up the thrusters, the shuttle humming to life beneath them. Up ahead, Rey could see the hangar’s transparent blue ray shield blink off.

“There’s a waypoint a few klicks past Rakata Prime’s orbit.” As Kylo spoke, a primary set of coordinates popped up on her holoscreen. “Once we’re there, it’ll take us to the approximate location of the signal’s origin.” On command, a second set of coordinates appeared, these ones coded for hyperspace. “The trip shouldn’t take more than a few hours, using this waypoint.”

Rey swallowed. “You’re certainly prepared.”

Kylo’s eyes slid up from their position, glued to his own holoscreen. “It’s _my_ galaxy. The least I can do is know her.”

The sentiment touched Rey in a way she couldn’t place, even if it was cloaked in a desperate, firce ownership, but before she could say anything in response, Kylo gestured to her own controls. “Ready when you are.”

Remembering her place, Rey quickly plotted the coordinates and primed the weapons systems. “Ready.”

The Supreme Leader accelerated the thrusters, and the shuttle slowly tipped through the hangar and out of the bay doors with the careful practice of an expert hand. The starfield beyond them stretched out to infinity, an entire universe carved in speckles of stars and blankets of blackened void. The smooth, even curve of Rakata Prime’s surface cornered the viewport, shrinking and ultimately disappearing from sight and radar systems. No matter how many times she thrust herself into the expansive, endless mass of space, Rey never got used to it. For years and years on Jakku, surrounded by nothing but sand and space junk and scavengers, she had dreamed of the day when she could leave the desert behind and jettison into space with her parents by her side. She knew what space looked like, knew that the sky was black and the stars a blinking white, but she hadn’t anticipated the happy anxiety that would seize her stomach, the soaring feeling caught in her throat. It never went away, never got any easier. But that never bothered her.

“Approaching the waypoint,” Kylo murmured from beside her— Rey had nearly forgotten he was there. She could feel the edges of his gaze on her, but when she turned to meet his eyes he was already queuing the next set of coordinates. “Entering hyperspace.”

And then the starfield bloomed and warped around them, the viewport painting the cockpit in brilliant light, and finally, as Kylo activated the hyperdrive, erupted into a shimmering vortex of vibrant blues. Rey could hear the hyperdrive beep its assent, relaxing into autopilot. Kylo slumped back slightly in his seat, hands leaving the controls to slide gracelessly through his hair. But she still couldn’t tear her eyes from the sight of the twisting stars whizzing past them, billions and billions of lives on planets she couldn’t even see, people living and dying and everything in between. Every second that passed, their ship hurtled past dozens of systems: countless lives, interwoven and complex, linear and plain. She didn’t think about it long; all those people, and the war that raged around them, made her head spin.

Eventually, she turned back to Kylo; he had glued his gaze to the profile of her face, his own bathed in blue. They didn’t say anything, for a moment, but there was nothing to be said— it was only them, their bodies, singular and together for scraps of moments, sprinkled throughout the universe.

“You know we have to be prepared for assault, if something unexpected meets us at our destination.”

His voice was soft, smooth as honey, rumbling at the back of his throat, but the message it carried was sharper, more sinister. Sadder, even. Rey sighed, hands settling in her lap.

“I didn’t know that was the plan.”

Kylo only let a beat of silence pass between them. “It has to be.”

Rey looked up from her hands. “Why? Why does it _have_ to be that?” She didn’t want to fight, not again, but even after everything, that terrible question had been bubbling at the back of her throat, threatening to spring free if gone unanswered.

She had known all along that it had an answer, though. She just hadn’t wanted to hear it.

Kylo’s gaze turned to stone, his voice like melting ice. “You know why. And you know why I killed Han Solo, too, why I brought Luke to his own death, but you still asked me then, too. And now—”

“No, stop.” Rey lifted a hand to halt him from continuing. “Yes. I do know. I just don’t like it. I only wish things could change.” Kylo looked like he might respond to her plea, unexpected even to her, to stray from the path he’d chosen. So Rey pivoted back to her original point. “But I really don’t want to fight about it now. I just want a few hours of peace between us.”

For a moment, the only sound was the hyperdrive beneath them, happily humming away as the stars bended to their will, carving a path across the galaxy to a Jedi distress signal older than their ancestors. The quiet gnawed at Rey’s senses, itching for her to speak, to take it back, to fill that silence, but she resisted, letting it hover in the air between them.

If Kylo seemed taken aback by her words, he masked it well. A hand slid through his hair again, and he sighed. “Okay. Fine.”

Rey nodded, resolute. “Good.”

And that same silence, now stuffy and awkward, resettled throughout the cockpit. If Rey hadn’t had the life support readings just inches from her face, she would have thought there was too much air in the room, and none of it breathable. A line of sweat began to prick at the hairline of her forehead. Her hands fidgeted in her lap.

“We won’t arrive in Wild Space for a few hours,” Kylo finally said, his eyes trained on the viewport. “There’s a bunk in the aft quarters— we only need one person up here managing the hyperdrive.” The dismissal was clear in his voice, but a lilt at the word _need_ left it open-ended. _Stay, if you must. If you could. Please._

Rey didn’t say anything. There was nothing _to_ say. She stood in one fluid motion, hands falling to her sides, and walked towards the cockpit’s main door.

They had left the _Finalizer_ during a night cycle, but she knew she wouldn’t return to a restful sleep. She couldn’t. Instead, when she entered the empty bunk, she planted herself on the thin mattress, leaned against the durasteel wall, and closed her eyes, trying to empty her mind.

When she was finally calm, her mind was fixed on the vision, repeated forever, of the twisting stars, bending around them, everything that ever was and would be rushing past in mere seconds, over and over again.

***

Sleep came in fitful spurts to Rey that night, as their shuttle barreled through hyperspace towards uncharted territory. As she awoke, restless and anxious, it wasn’t the thought of an unknown signal that scared her, or the danger that might lay ahead, but the blind vastness of it all— years spent on the small, banal wasteland of Jakku hadn’t prepared her for the infinity of the galaxy, the universe that lay beyond. And yet her mind still gravitated towards another endless void she didn’t have the first idea on how to navigate— her relationship with the man who piloted their ship.

She stretched against the hard cot, rubbing sleep from her eyes. As she slowly rose into a sitting position, Rey could faintly smell the pungent grounds of fresh caf brewing outside. She got to her feet and crossed from the private corridor back into the cockpit, arriving in almost the same scene she had left the night before. Kylo was still in the pilot’s chair, though markedly more slouched than when they had departed yesterday, with feet crossed on the edge of the control panel and a shining durasteel cup in his hands, filled to the brim with steaming brown liquid. At the sound of the doors _whirr_ ing open and closing behind her, he swiveled in his seat, briefly making eye contact before gesturing to the seat next to him.

“Caf?” he asked, gesturing to a carafe placed precariously on an extinguished console. “I just made some.”

“Sure.” Rey tried at a smile, grabbing the carafe and the cup next to it then pouring herself a portion. The argument that had budded last night— and was promptly squashed— still lay rank between them, like a rotting carcass. True to form, they stiffly ignored it, and thus each other.

“We should approach the waypoint shortly,” Kylo murmured, by way of conversation.

“Shortly?” Rey asked, daring a smirk and a wry glance his way. “How scientific.”

To her own relief, Kylo matched her smile, his eyes clear. “I could calculate an estimate for you, but that’s not how I know.” He paused, gaze now solidly glued to her, and Rey felt a stirring in the root of her stomach. “It’s an ancient Jedi code, calling out through the Force. That’s how I picked up on it, back on the _Finalizer_. If you reach out, you can feel it, too.”

Rey held his gaze for a moment longer, barely allowing herself to concentrate on the Force, and then, like a mirage streaking across her vision, a single red light blinked through the cerulean blur of hyperspace around them. It bloomed like a crimson flower, a black center with sharp petals dripping blood, rivulets running back to her through the Force. The flower wilted and died, collapsing into nothing before growing anew, the same voided middle surrounded by bleeding petals, living and dying in a vicious cycle. It was crying, Rey realized, as the petals melted back into the swirling basin that was the galaxy, crooning an endless dirge that demanded an audience. She felt _pulled_ to it, instinctively

She blinked, and the light was gone—the starfield, too. Only Kylo existed in her vision, in the seat next to her, holding her gaze. The cup of caf in her hands was shaking, small brown drops of liquid splashing against the dull grey durasteel.

“The distress signal— that was it,” she breathed, keeping her eyes glued to Kylo, because she knew he had seen it, too. “You planted the coordinates based on that— _that’s_ what you’ve been monitoring.”

Kylo nodded, softly, then swiveled in place to set down his caf and begin checking the hyperdrive stabilizers absently on his console. “The pull is strong, magnetic, even, but only to Force users. I felt the transmission before any communications officer had received the code— it was only after the message was sent to me that my suspicions were confirmed. It only seems to operate on a plane comprehensible to people like you and me.” Despite the nature of his tone, the ascetic quality that blanketed his words, the end of his sentence lilted up in a way Rey couldn’t ignore. _People like you and me_. Her and him. The fortuitous coupling of their names, words describing them, at the end of an objective statement. The sentiment of it rang clearly through Rey’s head. _It_ would _only be us. Who else in this galaxy has this power, save me and him? Could it be any other way?_

Rey forced herself to focus on the topic at hand. “But you can’t ignore the fact that it’s a great big mystery. We can’t interpret it, can’t understand it, so our best bet is to just go barreling towards it? What if it’s dangerous?”

“If it’s dangerous, only we can defeat it, and it’s something that can’t be ignored. This was our only option.” Kylo’s parry was smooth, uninterrupted, but a small vein of muscle ticked in his jaw. _It upsets him, our bickering like this. He’s afraid I don’t trust him._ She didn’t, wasn’t sure she could. But it wasn’t trust he wanted, she realized, only a mute recognition, understanding of his methods mixed with benign acceptance. He existed in absolutes, convinced himself there was only one way he could exist, because it was a great distraction from his reality, where a thousand possibilities eliminated themselves down to the two he couldn’t ignore.

Rey opened her mouth, a response lighting on her tongue, but that same mirage, igniting in her eyes, came first, a streak of red clouding her vision. “We’re there,” she said, the words coming nearly unbidden to her lips. “Stop the ship.”

But Kylo’s hands were already on the controls, smoothly cutting power to the hyperdrive as the starfield around them slowed and stilled. As the shuttle came to a slow halt, Rey’s curiosity swelled, warring with the Force-sensitive side of her that submitted willingly to the signal calling to her across star systems.

Rey blinked once, and then she saw it—a hulk of grey steel, outlined against the faraway winking stars of the sky, in the dead center of their viewport. She couldn’t quite call it a spaceship— though it compared in size, perhaps even dwarfing a Super Star Destroyer. She had no idea where it started or where it ended, and was nothing like any of the scraps she’d encountered on Jakku. It was constructed in a sleek diamond shape and bisected horizontally to create two halves, between which a beam of thin white light pulsed. Hues of deep crimson pulsed at its corners, reminding her of a dark masked bathed in angry light. She couldn’t describe it aloud, couldn’t identify it, and the only word her mind would produce was _monolith_.

“Is this where the signal is coming from?” Rey asked, speaking louder than intended to hide the bolt of timid fear that had struck through her at the sight. Her hands moved automatically to the controls, but before she could pull up a communications window, the shuttle trembled, jerked, and then went dark. _The power’s gone_ , Rey acknowledged, the computer in front of her dead and inoperable.

She turned to Kylo. “If we don’t get power restored, and life support stays down…” She didn’t finish the rest of the sentence, letting the gravity of their situation settle in the thickening air. Kylo was still staring at the monolith, eyebrows furrowed in piqued confusion, an expression of his Rey was hardly familiar with. She was about to put her scrapyard skills to use with a quick check under the console board when the ship began humming back to life underneath them, without prompt or pretense.

Kylo turned to her. The same banal fear of the unknown Rey felt beating through her heart was painted clearly on his eyes. “Did you do that?”

Rey shook her head violently, forehead creasing. “It was all on its own— the shutdown, and the restart, too.” She had to assume, by his response, that he hadn’t meddled with anything either. Her mind itched at the monolith, stationary in the corner of her periphery, begging to catch a glance of the anomaly, the unanswered question. “You don’t think it could have been—”

As if to answer her question, the shuttle suddenly shivered around them, the auxiliary engines firing up and accelerating unguided. Kylo, feeling control slip through his fingers, leaned over the console, both hands working furiously over the thick glass. But Rey could only watch, that same naked panic rising in her throat, as the shuttle propelled ever faster towards the sleek middle of the diamond monolith.

“We’re going to crash,” Rey murmured, unable to rip her gaze from the sharp corners of the monolith. “We’re getting closer, Kylo, do something—”

“There’s nothing wrong _here_ ,” Kylo interrupted, gesturing at the row of computers in front of him. “If there’s an engine problem—”

But they both knew the truth; by the time either of them got to the back and began tinkering with the engines in a feeble attempt to halt the ship’s acceleration, they’d both be dead, little more than space junk pressed violently to the flat, polished side of the monolith. Kylo turned to Rey, hands trembling, lip working between his teeth, his thoughts visibly churning over a sentiment she would never hear.

Because at that moment, the monolith— so close that it was nearly all that the two of them could see through the viewport— began to split apart. Its top half spun in a neat, slow circle, and the white beam of light thickened, grew, inviting their shuttle in. The light expanded, growing kilometers wider with each passing second. As they glided closer still towards the light, Rey could see smooth steel markings carved carefully through the borders of each flat side, and beneath it, red light burned.

Eventually, the brilliant white light of the crack in the monolith was all either of them could see.

Rey squinted, shielding her eyes from the light with her hand, but Kylo resisted, eyes roving over every inch of the blinding whiteness, and what grey steel they could still see. They both gawked at it, the monolith against the stars, and the wild white light drowned all others out.

The ship trembled and shook as it drew closer, although they were still attempting feebly to resist the grasp of whatever great mystery lay within the monolith and its light. A distant roar reached them through the transparisteel of the viewport, resounding through the cockpit. In the final moments before the light swallowed them whole, Rey felt an alien warmth, a breeze like spring, and a solid hand clasped around hers, trembling but firm. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and preparing herself, and after two constricting breaths, lost her grip on consciousness.

***

When Rey came to, slants of mid-morning light were illuminating the jostled cockpit. The now-cold caf was spilled across one of the main consoles, which was beginning to buzz ominously. The seat behind her had somehow spun backwards, though still nailed to the floor. She tried to recount her last memories, remembering the light, a grip on her fingers, and instinctively reached out to Kylo through the Force, panic surging through her veins. As she sat up, though, taking stock the cockpit, she could see him just a few feet away, lying strapped in his seat, eyes still closed. As if roused by her attention to him— through the Force or otherwise— his eyes fluttered open a moment later, and he sat up straight, briefly rubbing his eyes.

“Rey?”

“I’m here,” she said, slowly rising out of her seat to get a better look out of the viewport. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he replied shortly, unbuckling his own fastener as he copied her movements, scanning the consoles. “The ship, on the other hand…”

“Where are we?” Rey whispered, more to herself than him. The more time she spent looking outside the ship’s viewport, into the vast expanse of land ahead of them, the more her head spun.

“There’s nothing _wrong_ with it, it’s just… not working,” he continued, his hands roving over the controls. “It’s still gathering readings from the planet we’ve seemed to crash on, though it can’t seem to calculate our relative location in the galaxy—”

“Kylo,” Rey stopped him. “Look.” She gestured to the view outside, and Kylo followed, eyes scanning the field they’d landed in, and the view beyond it.

The grass tufts populating the clearing were a brilliant green, almost too bright to be grass, with small flowers blooming in odd places, dispersed among the bushes. To the right a great square cliff sliced into the bright blue skyline, with carvings cut at sharp right angles edging into its facade. Small trees, growing no larger than the size of a young child, lined the crease where ground met cliff. Great boulders floated in the ravine beyond the clearing’s edge like clouds, with shades of green populating their hills.

When Rey turned to gauge Kylo’s own reaction; his eyes still roamed the landscape, taking in the oddly perfect greenery, the jumbled mess that stretched out before him. It was exactly right, and thus jarringly wrong, both pleasing and terrible. Kylo’s eyes were tight, his mouth resting in a frown, but Rey could see his jaw working beneath the skin of his cheek. _Even now, on the brink of the universe, of reality, he hides his emotions, keeps his true self from me._

She was about to suggest an alternate plan, perhaps a check of the main engines or a distress call back to the _Finalizer_ , abandoning the Jedi signal altogether— but then she felt it, reverberating through the planet’s rough soil, so powerful she was surprised it didn’t smack her back into unconsciousness.

“This planet,” she breathed, “is strong in the Force.”

Kylo said nothing, only nodded slowly. Rey had no idea if a _planet_ could be aligned with the Force in any way, only that this one was. It was stronger than anything she’d felt before, even on Ahch-To, where the Jedi communed thousands of years ago to form a religion on the power they harnessed. It wasn’t just the light, either— darkness quaked deep in the bowels of the earth, waiting for its shot in the sky.

Rey noticed Kylo’s hands roving over the consoles again— the computers were working, churning out requests and commands, but the engines, the weapons systems, anything essential to the ship’s operation, was seemingly off. “Atmosphere is breathable,” Kylo rumbled next to her, and when Rey looked back at him, a small strand of hair, washed in sunlight, had fallen into his eyes, cutting into the serene profile that his full lips, aquiline nose and soft, pliant eyes made. She had to resist the urge to reach out, to push that stark black piece back into place, but stopped herself. “We don’t seem to be anywhere in the mapped galaxy— the computer’s not even putting us in Wild Space.”

“Where else could we be? The waypoint would have directed us straight to the signal.” As Rey spoke, her hands worked quickly at her own display. “The computer’s even catalogued it— when we came out of hyperspace, the arrival coordinates were noted, and they match the planned destination.” She turned to Kylo, who was now fully fixed on her. “Wild Space.”

Kylo was at an impasse, his mind working quickly over some answer, any possible solution to the predicament they found themselves in. “The diamond, that— _thing_ that we saw— you don’t think it could have taken us from the galaxy?” The question, naked and uneasy in tone, lay open to her, its fresh vulnerability stirring her own.

“The computer has mapped the known universe, as far as we know. If it can’t pick up our location…” Rey couldn’t say it. Even if they were in a different realm, unmapped and uncharted, there was no discernible solution for getting back home.

“That’s impossible.”

“It’s reality.”

“But—”

“I’m going for a walk,” she cut in, shoving herself away from the main consoles and walking towards the exit. “If there’s a way off this planet, I don’t think we’ll find it here.” The cockpit was silent as she triggered the ship’s ramp open— if Kylo intended to follow, she couldn’t hear his footfall.

The morning breeze grazed her cheeks genially, brushing off the stale, acrid smell of a night spent in a cramped shuttle. The smell of fresh grass and wet earth bounded up to meet her, the bright yellow sun warming her skin. A good distance away, Rey could hear water rushing through waterfalls and rivers, and soon the Force came to her unbidden, showing her the life that flourished here, the death that would succeed it.

Despite herself, she took a moment, letting her eyes flutter shut, absorbing the planet and everything it held. It could have been seconds, minutes that she stood there, a silent witness to that lush and tranquil peace— it didn’t matter. It only mattered that she felt it, let it wash over her, absorbing down into her bones.

“Are you the One?”

“What?” Rey started from her reverie, searching the landscape around her for the source of the voice.

“No, you’re not.” The voice sounded disappointed, almost wistful. When Rey turned away from the ship she saw her—a woman with flowing green hair beneath a crowned halo, dressed lightly in shades of gold and cream. Her presence was— _ethereal_ , her hair flowing unrestrained through a spectral wind. Her voice was loud and soft, powerful and demure, all at once echoing in Rey’s mind rather than her ears. Even her skin glowed, and she was almost translucent— yes, Rey _could_ see the outline of those jagged rocks behind her form. Even in the Force, she could feel unbidden light radiating from her like the sun, free from the shackles of any kind of darkness.

“But you know of him, and you know his descendant. Yes, he is here now, in this realm— the _Descendant_. I feel his presence.”

“What are you talking about? We’re not supposed to be here, we got lost—“

“On the contrary.” The woman’s thin lips turned up slowly, barely a smile. “You are _right_ where you are supposed to be.”

Rey was struck dumb, unable to respond. She was formulating a response to the impossible, the unknown, when she heard another sound—a footfall on the ramp behind her. When she whirled around she was relieved to see Kylo emerging from the bay door, head turning slowly as he took in his surroundings.

“Rey—” It took him less time to spot the woman in front of them both, and when he did, he froze in his tracks, his whole body tense. “Who are you?”

“I am Daughter— or I was. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is you; I know who you are. You are the Descendant. And I am to take you to him.”

“To whom?” The subtle anger in Kylo’s voice was unmistakable; Rey quietly noticed his passing over of the first words she had spoken.

The Daughter looked at him as if he was speaking tongues. “The Father, of course.”

Rey could barely keep up with the cadence Kylo had set with the woman—the apparition— before them. “Father of what? What’s going on?”

The Daughter smiled, thin lips pulling into a knowing look that reached her eyes. “Father of you, and you too, Descendant. Father of your galaxy and ours and each one in between. He has protected and sanctified the Force for as long as time has existed, letting it bend and flow through this realm, this planet. And it is him to whom you must speak, here.”

It was as if Rey could see the exact moment Kylo’s building temper tipped into the realm of danger— his jaw flexed, taut skin beneath his eye twitching once, twice, and then he reached for the saber clipped at his belt, pointing the metal hilt at the shade floating between them.

“You speak to the Supreme Leader of the First Order, _Daughter_. I have no patience for riddles. Tell us where we are or I will not hesitate to strike you down.”

Before Rey could intervene, stop the violence before it began, the Daughter stepped forward smoothly, still smiling, with a slender hand outstretched. Long, thin fingers curled around Kylo’s wrist before he could jump back. “Even if I could let you— _strike me down_ — your own crude weapon could not touch me, not in this realm.” Gently, softly, her grip pressed his arm back down to his side— and yet, Rey noticed, she could still see the pale skin of his wrist, the snaking veins beneath it, through her the Daughter’s fingers. “I would advise caution here, Descendant.”

“Descendant.” Kylo repeated the word back to her, tasting it in his mouth. Despite being spurned, he seemed eerily calm to Rey— yes, even through the bond, she could feel his errant wrath ebbing away and curiosity taking its place, reluctant yet keen. “Why do you call me that?”

The Daughter merely shook her head, emerald strands of hair slowly separated by the wind, ghosting across her pale cheeks. “This is not a question I can answer. The Father will explain everything. But you both must come with me.” As she spoke, the olive shades of her eyes rose up to the sky, scanning the scene before them. “Every second that passes, my power here wanes. And it will be replaced by something far more sinister.” She turned slowly— still surveying their surroundings— and walked towards the angled cliffs, with barely a look back to see if they followed.

Rey’s eyes locked onto Kylo’s, holding his gaze. He still refused to disclose to her the timid vulnerability that she already felt through the Force, keeping his expression guarded, but with an underlying admission of trust, or maybe just the precarious faith they needed to achieve their joint survival.

“Go ahead,” Rey gestured to the space between them. “I’ll cover you— she won’t attack from the front.”

Kylo shook his head. “No— you’ll be exposed. Let me follow.”

Rey bit back a sigh, keeping an eye on the expanding distance between them and the Daughter.

“Listen to her, Kylo. To the threat she describes, there’s only one of us here worth assailing, and it isn’t me.” The word _descendant_ was still floating through her mind, attempting to find purchase, but she had long ago mastered the skill of burying unwanted thoughts, and did so now. “If anyone here’s in danger, it’s you. I’ll follow.”

The air between them was stagnant for a beat of silence. Kylo weighed her words carefully, and something like pity, mixed with a muffled shock, swam in his eyes. Finally, though, he seemed to make his decision, and with a muted sigh, took one step forward, and then another, through the verdant clearing around them and towards the Daughter, his long legs easily closing the distance.

“Stay close,” he murmured over his shoulder as she fell in line behind him. “I still don’t trust this.” His warning was almost begrudging, a half-hearted pushback against her insistence to flank him.

“I don’t either,” she whispered back, eyes drifting over the square-cut bluffs they now passed under. The tenuous promise between them lay unspoken. _I don’t trust this, but maybe I can trust you._

Now that her mind was mostly occupied with watching their back and stepping over the occasional bramble and vine snaking through their path, her idle thoughts returned to that same word— _descendant_. She’d known Kylo came from a strong line of Force users, with Luke Skywalker training him and the legacy of Darth Vader looming over him, but it had never really cemented with any significance in her mind. She’d never thought of him as the sum of those before him, the progeny of greatness. He’d only ever been Kylo, then Ben, then Kylo again.

Now, though, it was all she could think about, especially in comparison to her own dismal bloodline.

She didn’t know if her strength in the Force was hereditary— she might never know. But the truth Kylo had extracted from her on the _Supremacy_ , surrounded by burning bodies, still rang through her mind: filthy junk traders, dead in a pauper’s grave. It was certainly far from greatness, even if they had been strong once. But something told Rey that any competent Force user could evade the indignity of starvation, of a death by poverty. And she refused to believe anyone skilled in the Force would abandon their own daughter, sell her off for a meager chance at another day of life.

 _Force users_ could _do that_. Rey corrected herself quickly as she stepped over a fallen branch, keeping her eyes trained on the dark quilting of Kylo’s doublet. _Perhaps I just refuse to believe that I would spring from the ilk of a Sith— of the dark side._

Distracting herself, Rey observed that the same word she had been busying herself with for most of their journey had been mulled over by Kylo as well. Through the bond she could feel his tight anxiety, the uneasy feeling that came with the word _descendant_ , and all it entailed. The legacy he hoped conclude, slashed here and there with startling visions of a bearded man in shades of white, holding an ignited lightsaber above his sleeping form.

 _Let the past die_ , he’d told her once, attempting to strip her from a yesterday that still shackled her to empty expectations.

And yet he’d unwittingly let himself become shaped by his history, lived and unlived. He’d carved himself out a place in the galaxy that could be no one else’s but his. Cloaked in darkness, Kylo Ren tried desperately to exert a dominance over every part of his life that had caused him pain or terror, instead of crying out for help, like the lonely, guileless son he’d tried so hard to outgrow.

The place he’d carved was just an empty fortress, a testament to his hopeless and tragic attempts at protecting the boy he’d been, kept sentry by the man he’d become.

Rey shook her head, bringing her gaze back to the ground. She couldn’t change him now, here. Worrying over him wouldn’t change the truth: they had come to a tenuous agreement, maybe even trust, but still found themselves on opposite sides of an endless war, unwilling to budge. She carefully evaded another branch in the pathway beside the cliff, browning dead leaves crunching underfoot.

 _In fact_ … She slowly came to her senses, glancing behind her at the greenery they had left behind. _The plants here, the grass, it’s all dying_. Tufts of green grass turned to spikes of brown; leaves on trees withered and died, falling to the ground as the branches above them sagged and cracked, outlined by a setting sun. Any sign of life was fading quickly.

“Kylo,” Rey whispered, careful not to grab the attention of the Daughter. “The plants. Everything’s dying.”

He glanced over his shoulder, feigning a look out on the horizon to give her a nod. “No animals, or any other species, either. Just fading vegetation.” As if on cue, a breeze from ahead blew through a cluster of bushes, shaking tawny leaves from its branches and scattering them through the wind. “In fact, the further we go, the colder it gets. We arrived in the morning, but the sun has nearly set.”

“I can’t explain anything that happens here,” Rey muttered back to him, kicking aside a cluster of dead grass tumbling through the dirt path. “Just being here has me confused.”

Kylo hummed his agreement. “Stay close. I can’t imagine this means anything good.”

Up ahead, the Daughter kept her pace, floating gracefully past the dying flora along the path.

“He is close,” she suddenly interjected, a quiet acknowledgement of their hushed dialogue. “A storm is brewing; he will strike us here.” A pale, translucent finger pointed out to the skyline, where thick clouds were beginning to darken and grow among the floating boulders. “As my power here fades, his strengthens.”

A flash of lightning illuminated the black mass, obscuring the sun that was nearly beyond the horizon. The Daughter’s pace quickened, and so did Rey and Kylo’s.

Despite herself, a small stab of fear at the unknown, at the imminent storm coming to greet them, struck at her heart. It must have reverberated through the bond, because Kylo’s steps grew mechanical, and he snuck another glance at her over his shoulder. Instead of guarded eyes, though, he met her with care, concern.

“We’ll stick together,” he whispered back to her. Through the bond she could feel him expose his heart to her, the warmth that pooled at the center of his chest, and found it full of surety, of calm protection over her and himself. As he spoke, holding her gaze, a heavy, black cloud passed in front of the sun, darkening his face.

“I promise.”

Rey could only meet his gaze, carefully wiping any sign of anxiety from her expression, and nod to him. “Okay.” When he saw that she was alright, he returned the nod, almost diligently, stately, and then faced towards the Daughter again, his pace fluid and strong once more.

Before she could think on that, though, a flash of lightning split the air above them, striking at a high point on the cliff. Even from this distance, she could hear a devastating crack as the stone split, pared away from its base, and tipped into the air, tumbling down to their meager dirt path.

Instinctively, Rey scrambled back, frantically judging the projection of the avalanche, where it might land. She could see Kylo rush forward ahead of her, towards the Daughter, where a potentially protective stone outcropping shielded the sky from view.

The boulder, separated from the cliff, fractured into smaller and smaller pieces as it descended towards the ground, picking up dangerous speed. Rey tipped back, praying desperately to the Force it would miss them—

And with a _thunk_ , the largest portion of rock cemented itself in the pathway, just feet from her collapsed form.

Her heart thumped in her chest, breath ricocheting out of her in short gasps. Her first instinct was to call out to Kylo— though he likely wouldn’t hear her— before she felt his presence, pricking at her mind like an itch, begging for the bond to be open. She collapsed into their shared connection gratefully.

 _You’re alright?_ She could almost feel Kylo checking over her body for broken bones, scraped knees. _Not hurt?_

Rey shook her head, before remembering the stone obstruction that kept her from his vision. _I’m alright._ She huffed. _You’d better be fine, too_ — _I can’t haul your lifeless body back to the ship once I’m done Force-lifting this boulder all on my own._

Her dry humor didn’t quite seem to reach Kylo in his calculated state of calm. _It’s too strong to move, even with our combined power. For now, we’re stuck apart._ Even through the bond, Rey could hear that same exposed vulnerability, apprehension at being apart from her.

 _Keep following the Daughter_ , Rey offered in lieu of a solution, attempting to distract them both from what time apart might mean. _I’ll wait out the storm around and then seek an alternate path. We’ll keep this connection open in case anything happens._ Her mind would be closed to him, they both understood, but if he needed her attention, or she his, they would know.

Rey could feel Kylo nodding. _Okay._ An empty space where a customary goodbye might insert itself— _good luck, be safe_ — sat empty between them, gathering attention until Rey finally severed the connection for the briefest of moments. When she peeked back into that corner of her mind where Kylo had lingered moments ago, she felt his mild assent, annoyance at the Daughter he was now stuck with, and a persistent longing she couldn’t help but let seek into her own spirit.

With her own brand of self-preservation, Rey turned on a heel and marched back the way they came along the cliffside, peeking in here and there at outcroppings of stone in a search for shelter. She remembered spotting a cave’s entrance about halfway between the boulder and their shuttle, but she knew to avoid the storms she would have to hurry, or seek an alternate path.

It didn’t take long for the sun to set behind the roiling clouds, casting her vision into a shadow of night. The thunderstorm always churned at the corner of her vision, dark swaths of sky suddenly illuminated by lightning, and then hastily snuffed out. It was moving quickly, pressing down on her, a constant reminder of her imminent danger, and more distantly, the mute promise between her and Kylo.

After turning one corner, then another, retracing her steps back to a fork in the path, she came upon a small opening in the cliff’s face, two sharp points of rock creasing into an entrance. _A cave_. By this time the moon was waxing in the night sky, and fat droplets of rain fell intermittently to the ground, quickly absorbed by the dirt and memorialized in the shape of small, indented circles.

Rey brushed aside what sparse vegetation had managed to take hold of the stone slabs at the entrance, only to find the plants disintegrating into dust in her hands. _Everything is dying. Not just dying_ — _ceasing to exist._ Another sweeping glance behind her showed a landscape of darkness, with barely a plant in sight— the green caps of forest and grass growing atop the floating boulders were melting in the rain, grey ash dripping down the rockside as the storm picked up strength.

_What is this place?_

Prioritizing her safety over that growing sense of curiosity, she ducked her head inside the cave’s entrance, igniting her saber to light her way. Nothing grew in here, either— little cracks in the stone or gatherings of dirt where weeds and grass might spring up in tufts lay empty, devoid of life or energy.

The narrow corridor the entrance provided expanded out into a central chamber, where the dirt-packed ground smoothed out into a flat stone floor. The cave’s grey walls ran in a smooth circle and caved in at a point forty or fifty meters above Rey’s head; near the space where those walls met the ground, small glowing crystals the color of a breaking tide were cropping up, shining a sparse light throughout the room. _This is as good a place as any_ , Rey thought to herself, clearing away the dirt and grime in an attempt to find a comfortable spot on an unyielding stone floor.

Outside, thunder crackled and bolts of lightning briefly illuminated the sides of the corridor’s walls. Occasionally Rey could hear rocks knocking together— maybe hail, another avalanche, or those great boulders knocking together. She found a collection of ashen leaves in one corner, by a smattering of crystals; with the help of her lightsaber, was able to construct a shoddy fire. The orange light of the flames mixed with the cool white of the crystals and kept her warm. A part of her trembled at the sounds of the storm outside, acutely aware of her imminent solitude, but another was strangely comforted by the sounds of rain lashing at the impenetrable fortress she’d stumbled upon. With no discernible sensation on the other end of her connection with Kylo, and the lack of rest she’d caught the night cycle before pressing down on her mind, Rey settled back against the stone, watching her dying flames dance against the cave walls, and slowly gave herself over to sleep.

***

Kylo’s patience with the Daughter was thinning.

Sure, he’d been less than amenable to her sudden presence on the planet— even if it was her own— and less than willing to share her own stores of information with him and Rey, but he’d given it his best shot. A passing probe of the woman’s consciousness, mind tricks, even a feeble attempt at trapping her through the Force— she had barely reacted to any of it.

And yet he couldn’t quite call her _strong_ in the Force. It surrounded her thickly, yes, binded her to this planet, and her own ethereal form, but it wasn’t quite a part of her the way it was with Kylo, or Rey. The more he pondered the idea— an _affiliation_ with the Force rather than an alliance with it— the more it made his head swim, the confusion of this morning’s events coupling with the exhaustion of the evening.

“You are tired, confused,” the Daughter spoke, her voice reverberating through him, “but we cannot rest, or speak yet on the questions you consider. The monastery is just up ahead; there you will find the answers you seek, and a path to the peace you so desire.”

She didn’t look back, didn’t wait for his reaction to that, but even as Kylo kept his face guarded and free of emotion, his thoughts churned. _The peace you so desire_.

He knew Rey thought there was a possibility for him to turn, to find power in the light, bond himself to it. But he had grown up a Skywalker, trained under the last surviving Jedi. He knew light, just as he knew darkness. And he knew his choice well.

Kylo stilled his mind, running a shaking hand through his hair. _Pondering over her words matters little,_ he told himself. _She could just be referring to the peace of a night cycle’s sleep. I’ll go to this monastery, get my answers about the Jedi code, and leave this place for good._

The dirt path widened and curved around the angled corner of the cliff’s face. As Kylo rounded past it, he recognized the monastery instantly: a steepled temple capping the tallest cliff, flanked by two shorter, identical peaks, with a glowing white diamond at its apex. He could sense the Force resonating through the building before he’d even though to check; even from this distance, the sensation was startling, unlike anything he’d felt before. Below it, spindly trees like lightning grew from the earth, though Kylo couldn’t quite call them vegetation, or even life.

“This is where you find your answers, Descendant. This is where the Father awaits, his spirit standing sentry for your arrival. This is where your path begins.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! If you enjoyed feel free to comment or shout at me on Twitter [@ben69solo](https://twitter.com/ben69solo/). Much love!!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"A decision looms in your future, one that rests on a fulcrum which can change the galaxy, for better or worse. Ben controls it, too, has a stake in it just like you. But the power rests with you to choose what’s right."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to [Tamara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives) and [Becca](https://twitter.com/torra_doza/) for beta reading (also shoutout to Becca for peer pressuring me into updating this again after a loooing hiatus). Love you both sm uwu!!

**TRACK: __** _Ellipses_ — _Andrew Bird_

In the cave, surrounded by crystals, Rey dreamt.

Jakku came to her first, of course, as it always did. The desert swirled around her, grains of sand lifting up with the wind and drifting in invisible waves. She was by her old AT-AT, her old home; even now, she could recognize the rise and fall of the dunes around her, that old feeling of banal belonging that was so unfamiliar now. The wind didn’t move around her, but _through_ her. If she reached out, fingers splayed open as if to catch the wind, she could see grains of sand passing through her skin, as if she wasn’t even there. 

“Rey.”

When she turned, looking for the source of the sound, her vision seemed to fail; all around her, all she could see was black. As her eyes strained to focus, though, she could make out small specks of white, creating a loose dome around her. _The night sky._ If she looked down, thin, glowing lines cut through the darkness and formed paths around and above her, defying gravity and leading to brightly lit portals dispersed throughout the void.

“Rey.”

That voice again, more insistent. When she turned her head this time, still searching for the source, her vision seemed to flicker. Each singular moment of time—shorter than a second, shorter even than the span of time it took her to blink—contained a different image, a different landscape painted on her eyelids. The images shifted and changed as she moved, and some she slowly began to recognize—Ahch-To, Takodana, Jakku again. Others were darker, more sinister, planets with dark ice and lava snaking through black rock, places she hoped never to visit. 

It’s not her, she realized after she turned her head again, more slowly this time, so that the images moved accordingly. _It’s this place, showing me these planets_. In the moments in between visions, she scanned the darkness all around her, the bright lines cutting through it, carving those pathways to intricately decorated circles and triangles.

“Rey.”

She turned again—that flickering still wiping the backs of her eyelids—to see, once she’d stopped and reoriented herself, Luke standing before her. He looked different from the last time they’d met—clean shaven, shorter hair, darker robes—and his eyes looked lighter, like a weight had been lifted. His form was transparent to her, lit in shades of blue, but that didn't make him any less real to her.

“Luke.” It didn’t take long for emotion to swell up at the sight of her old master, even if their last interaction hadn’t ended on the best terms. “Where am I?”

He must have sensed her fear and apprehension, because his own expression softened. “You’re safe, for now. I’m not sure I can explain this place to you—not sure anyone could—but for now, you’re not in harm’s way.”

Rey’s panic subsided, but only temporarily. “Is this a dream? The last I remember, I was on the strangest planet, sleeping in a cave—Kylo and I, we crash-landed after we saw this—this _thing_ , and—”

“I know,” Luke interjected gently. “I’ve seen it, through the Force.”

That gave her pause. “You mean you’ve seen like… him and me?” Her stomach dropped.

“Bits and pieces. Just because the Jedi have the power to spy on their successors doesn’t mean they always take the opportunity.” He winked at her then, linking his fingers together and stepping forward in a way that made Rey’s heart hurt, made her want to close the distance and hug him, even though she knew she couldn’t, not when he was like this. “But I understand.”

Rey scoffed, her anxiety momentarily forgotten. “I don’t.”

“I can’t explain it to you, not all of it, but, Rey…” Luke sighed, a mirthless chuckle catching on the end of his breath. “It’s always the same lesson with you. Search your feelings; look inside. You know the truth, it’s just… waiting to be discovered by you. And Ben.”

At that, Rey turned—the flickering had stopped by now, her vision back to normal—and walked across the white-lit pathways towards one of the portals not far from her. “So you can’t explain this. This place.” _It doesn’t feel real_ , she thought to herself, marveling at the vast expanse of black sky all around her. _It’s like another world_.

“I can try, based on what I know.” She could hear Luke behind her, and, assuming he was following, continued towards the glowing circle. “In the same way the planet you found yourself on is a conduit of the Force, this… _controls_ that power too, or at least siphons it into something. Into this.”

When Luke stopped speaking, Rey turned again to meet his gaze, but she only saw a calm face, those comforting blue eyes. He nodded slightly, beckoning back to something now behind her, and when she spun around—

The circle wasn’t empty, wasn’t black anymore, but instead filled with the image of a vibrant, lush green planet with a quiet sea and cerulean sky. She had to blink once, twice before realizing the image wasn’t an image, but was almost like a holo; the grass fluttered as the wind carded through it, the sea foaming and cresting here and there. 

Rey swallowed, trying to keep her mind working, her thoughts rational. “And we’re still on that planet, the one we crash landed on? Is _this..._ part of that?”

Luke walked around her, over that black void, leading her towards another portal. “ _You_ are. I’m not, but I am… I’m not sure I can explain the complexities of the Jedi afterlife to you with the time we have together. But I can tell you that this place exists both separately from and in conjunction with the planet you are on now.” 

As they drew closer to the portal ahead, an image of Coruscant’s Senate chamber shimmered into view, with a much younger Leia leading a caucus among the sidelines while a pale-looking boy with black hair fidgeted by the wall. 

_That’s Kylo_ , Rey recognized with startling clarity. 

_Ben._

When she said as much to Luke, still ambling ahead of her, he nodded his agreement. “And this is Ben and myself, fifteen years ago. When I was a Jedi master, and he was merely an apprentice.” 

Another portal shimmered to life up ahead, with a dilapidated temple in the center of a set of huts, and a training class of padawans at its center. Ben was older in this one, but still a boy in Jedi robes, hesitation and reluctance permeating even through his posture even as he concentrated on a single task. He was using the Force, the light—she could almost see it flow around him in soft, glowing tendrils as a training droid hovered above him, throwing blows of blaster fire he easily parried. Luke watched him intently, and as the crease between Ben’s eyebrows grew stronger, more pronounced, so did Luke’s. 

Rey could see it then, could almost feel it, a quiet darkness creeping through him, through the Force he wielded. A small pout to his lips, then a quiver, and before Luke could notice it, could pull Ben from his reverie, Ben deflected one of the blaster shots right back to the droid with double the power and reduced it to a smoking husk faster than Rey could blink. 

Luke was still walking at the same pace; Rey struggled to keep up, desperately devouring each second of time the portals deigned to show her.

“I’ve watched you grow since Crait, Rey, watched you thrive in some ways, languish in others. But a decision looms in your future, one that rests on a fulcrum which can change the galaxy, for better or worse. Ben controls it, too, has a stake in it just like you. But the power rests with you to choose what’s right.”

Rey felt tears prick the back of her eyes. She missed her old master, and wished she could sit by him and listen to him thoughtfully the way she had on Ahch-To. This conversation was completely different though, too complicated and abstract for her to fully comprehend. “What do you mean?”

“To make that decision, Rey, you have to know the truth. The whole truth, the one even Ben won’t—can’t—tell you. The one I didn’t know myself before I became one with the Force, and the past opened itself to me.” As he spoke, another portal, the last Rey could see, slowly brightened into view, showing that same cluster of temples, and a tentative, younger Luke making his way slowly, thoughtfully, _hesitantly_ , towards one on the fringes, his lightsaber clipped at his side. 

Rey knew this night. She had seen it thrice before, through Luke, then Kylo, then Luke again. She knew what would happen. But before she could refuse, turn away, Luke shook his head, then nodded towards the portal. “The truth, Rey. The whole truth. From start to finish; nothing left out.”

After a sigh, the Luke inside the circle, the one not standing next to her, disappeared inside the temple, and the past began.

***

The walk up to the monastery was less strenuous than Kylo had originally predicted. Though the structure stood on steep, square-cut cliffs that had initially looked impossible to scale, the closer Kylo got, the smoother and flatter the mountains became, until the temple was just a small plateau away. When he looked back the way he came, through the glowing forest below the cliffs, he could still see the valley below, the difference in height, but if his gaze stuck, he could see a curve in the land, just below the corner of his eye.

_I can’t explain anything here, not with what I know, so I shouldn’t bother trying now._

The Daughter led him slowly, carefully, but her attention was mostly focused on the structure ahead. Kylo had initially attempted to probe her for information, asking questions about the planet that received only vague and half-hearted answers, but the closer they got, the quieter she grew, until eventually his queries about the monastery, its steepled construction and the glowing crystal at its apex, were met with mere silence. 

She moved lightly, like an angel, or a ghost. As the terrain around them became tamer and more uniform, he could only focus his attention on her, studying her features with an intense concentration, as if the qualities of her physical form held the answers to his questions, the path to his escape. Her entire body glowed, from the golden circlet covering her soft green hair down to the cream colored train of her skirts. High cheekbones, a small, smooth nose that curved perfectly down to the cupid’s bow of her small, downturned lips. 

_She’s beautiful, I’m sure_ , he noted absently, _but not happy. Not here._

If he concentrated, he could see _through_ her, especially in the darkness, to the rocky terrain in front of and beneath her. He considered attacking her, striking her down just to see if she was solid—but he remembered the way she had grasped his wrist, gently but firmly, the way she had had a hold on him, even if she wasn’t entirely here. He knew if he tried anything, the effort would be useless.

Eventually, the temple’s entryway came into view, little more than a squared-off archway standing against a semi-circular platform that denoted its entrance. When Kylo entered, still following the Daughter, the temple’s doorway appeared to open up into a cavernous hall that seemingly spread out into infinity on all sides. 

Straight down the middle was a narrow walkway that led all the way to an occupied throne at the room’s opposite end, all of it made of that same slate gray material as the rest of the temple. At its borders were glowing circles and triangles, perhaps acting as a fence to keep someone from falling over the side and seemingly into an endless void stretching out beneath. 

The only sound was Kylo’s footfalls, impossibly loud to his own ears as the woman— _apparition,_ he corrected himself—glided soundlessly across the floor and towards the man on the throne.

Even seated, Kylo could tell he was tall, and impossibly thin; his wrinkle-lined face and thick white beard seemed to have been elongated and tapered as if by an unseen, intangible force. He dressed in dark colors with accents of gold, hands pale and age-spotted, and though he seemed ancient, almost eternal, he wasn’t quite _old_. His eyes were pitch black, save a rim of glowing turquoise serving as irises, and somehow quick, full of light. 

And the puzzle of the Daughter continued unto this man; Kylo could _see_ him clearly, but could also see _through_ him, enough for his eyes to follow the square, straight patterns carved into the back of his throne. He too glowed, but it was not the unbridled golden light that shone freely from the Daughter’s cream-colored skin; his glow was darker, more subdued. 

_Whoever they are_ — _whatever they are, it must be the same. Or at least similar._

“Father,” the Daughter intoned as she approached, dipping into a bow. “I only found two. The girl I’ve lost, no doubt to my brother, but…” Here she turned slightly, head still bent to the man on the throne in deference, and gestured with her right hand to Kylo. “This is the Descendant.”

The man she had called Father clicked his tongue, slouching back in his throne. “Daughter, you know how we must conduct these things. Jumping to conclusions is exactly why we are here all over again.”

The Daughter kept her bow low, but Kylo could see her hands twitch, a crease ever so slightly forming between her brows. 

“If something troubles you, do not keep it from me. There will be no punishment for speaking one’s mind.”

She sighed, raising her head. “I feel it, Father. And I don’t think we were wrong before, either, maybe not about the prophecy, but—”

“We _were_.” The Father’s tone strung low then, singing through the room and across Kylo’s skin like thunder. “And we can’t be wrong again.”

Any hope of following their conversation with even a slight comprehension was lost to Kylo. He had no idea what they spoke of, what they referred to when they said _before_. Before what? What had they been wrong about?

Abruptly, the Father sat up in his throne, placing both hands evenly on its armrests and pivoting slightly to his left, where Kylo stood awkward and dumbstruck, unable to hide the poor attempts at following the conversation or take stock of his surroundings. “Leave us now, Daughter—the _Descendant_ has questions for which answers cannot wait.”

As she rose to her feet, Kylo watched the Daughter intently, his own brow still knitted in confusion, while she turned and—without even so much as looking his way—strode from the room the same way the two of them came.

“My Daughter is too quick to trust, to believe, and it has been her downfall before,” the Father said, bringing Kylo’s attention back to him. “But such is the nature of light; I have no quarrel with someone who simply acts within their nature. Just as I have no quarrel with you.” 

Kylo pursed his lips, again attempting to discern some kind of meaning from the man’s words. “Quarrel?”

“When your grandfather came here, decades ago, his initial reaction was to fight—just as yours was, with my Daughter.” Instinctively, Kylo’s hands moved to the lightsaber clipped at his side, fingers twitching. The Father must have noticed this gesture, because he smiled, just the smallest upturn of his lips. “It’s in your blood, in your _nature_. I don’t blame you for it. But I blame myself for letting things… run astray the last time I encountered one of your kind.”

_My kind?_ Kylo wasn’t attempting to hide his confusion, and the questions were piling up. “What happened to you—to this planet?”

“He destroyed us, the Chosen One. Our mortal forms were wiped out by him—and by ourselves—but the Force runs so strongly through this realm, our minds created immaterial beings to act as vessels for our power. The Jedi once called them 'Force ghosts'.” The Father paused, as if debating whether to continue. “It was supposed to balance us, this realm, all of it. But we act as a conduit for the Force and its power in the Galaxy. The imbalance restored us—our power growing only stronger.” 

“The imbalance.” Kylo’s voice was flat; he was hardly asking.

The Father nodded. “It falls to you, Descendant, and to those you surround yourself with. It’s in your bloodline—the blood of a Skywalker. The prophecy of rise and ruin runs deep through your lineage, from your grandfather, to your mother, and now to you.”

_Prophecy_. He had grown up used to the expectations of his Skywalker blood, the first and last of a new generation, but never with the ramifications of prophecy. He only knew of it from the grip it held on his predecessors. 

“That was my grandfather—Anakin Skywalker. He was the Chosen One, until he wasn’t. Until he was Darth Vader.” 

Even now, a small swell of pride rose up within him, for his relation to the man who saw the Jedi for the broken, archaic order they were and instead swore his allegiance to an Empire that served the Galaxy and himself better than a fractured Republic ever could. 

Another, smaller part of him surfaced in reminder of what his uncle had told him, years ago, about Darth Vader’s last moments alive, the mortal sacrifice he made to keep a son he barely knew alive. When he used his last breaths to become Anakin Skywalker again, even if just for a moment, before death finally took him. Part of Kylo rejected that, elected instead to remember his grandfather as the dark menace the rest of the galaxy knew. But another part of him—deeper, quieter, _sadder_ —relished that memory, that legacy. He wondered how it felt, to live your last moments as the man you were always meant to be. That part of him hoped for an ending like Anakin’s.

But the Father must have gotten it wrong—even if the prophecy this man spoke of could be passed on to new generations, it certainly skipped his. “I’m not the Chosen One—I don’t have the power my grandfather did, with the dark side or the light.” The more he spoke, the less he felt inclined to hide his feelings, and the more he spoke truth to the way he felt inside. “I’m not a Jedi, and I’m not a Sith. I don’t know what you would call it, what I am.”

“Conflicted, perhaps,” the Father said, stroking the long tendrils of his beard thoughtfully. “But not everything needs a name, Descendant. Jedi, Sith… The terms are so simple. So flimsy. Crafted for a speck of time that has already floated away. Or been quashed, I suppose. But no—you are something stronger, and so is she.”

_She._ “Rey.”

“The girl my Daughter spoke of, the one that accompanied you here.” The Father stood then, in one fluid movement, and drifted towards the spot where Kylo stood, circling him. “When news came to me that the Descendant was rising in power, there was talk of another… darkness rising, and light to meet it.” A chill went down Kylo’s spine as the echoes of his former master, former _tormentor_ , came through in the Father’s words. “History repeats itself. I had to see firsthand if the rumors were true, if balance could be achieved.”

Something clicked in Kylo’s mind. “You. You brought us here.”

“To verify the prophecy,” the Father finished for him. “I think I was foolish to believe once that balance could exist in one man alone. But now, it seems another... _solution_ has presented itself.”

Kylo swallowed, brow furrowing, lips pursing and unpursing, leaning on old sureties to support himself. “The Jedi proved at their downfall that that prophecy is a myth, a fallacy.”

“Is it?” The Father responded, his lips turning up in a smirk. “I should very much like to find out.”

***

The next morning, Rey woke to a tall silhouette of a man blocking the raging storm that leaked into her cave.

Initially, she was too disoriented to sense any danger, her last memories of a conversation with her former master in a field of stars. Distant visions, small moments of time, still blinked across her vision, little windows into someone else’s life.

But when she finally got her bearings, remembered where she was— _yes, I fell asleep here, Luke was just a dream_ —the man in the cave’s mouth was already advancing toward her, slowly yet surely.

She sprang to her feet in an instant, already palming her saberstaff, seeking out the ignitor. 

“Who are you?”

It was certainly no one she recognized, couldn’t be Kylo, but the way he moved towards her, with that air of familiarity... 

As the man walked away from the entrance and into the cave itself, the blue light of the crystals around her illuminated his pale-white face, lined in streaks of red stretching around his hairless head, and glowing eyes the color of dark blood. His entire form was as transparent to her as the woman’s had been, down by their ship the day before. A smile pulled his lips apart to reveal straight white teeth. 

A shiver went down her spine. 

“Oh, I think we can dispense with the formalities of introduction,” he grinned, his voice dark and deep. As he approached, the remnants of the fire she had built the night before— _morning before?_ —blew away, ash skittering across the stone floor. “After all, you’ve felt me before, no?”

“Felt you?” Rey’s voice was incredulous, her brow wrinkling in confusion. “I don’t _know_ you.”

“Oh, but I know you,” the stranger said, pupils bright and glowing against the black of his eyes. “Deny it all you want, wrap yourself in light and call it your ally, but in truth, you’re just pushing down a darkness you’ve never been able to refuse. I can feel it now, in your aversion to me, to this—”

Before he could finish his sentence, half of Rey’s saberstaff was ignited, pointed towards the stranger. She expected him to step back, cower in fear, but instead he did just the opposite, taking another step forward until his chest was just inches from the tip of her saber’s beam. 

“You need to leave,” she seethed, eyes narrowed, “or I’ll strike you down.”

The stranger’s grin was gone then, replaced quickly by an expression of wounded shock—brows upturned and lips parted slightly. On anyone else, it would have looked comical, but with a face in shades of stark red and white, the man’s expression served to make him even more terrifying. 

“But to strike an unarmed man… it’s hardly the Jedi way.” As Rey dimly registered the meaning of his words, his mock surprise melted into a cackle, eyes narrowing like a loth-cat stalking its prey. “You’re less than you make yourself out to be. I’ll make a villain of you yet.”

Rey was all but fuming, shades of confusion mixing with fury and fear as her breath came hot and quick. “No.” 

He smirked, almost shrugging. “Or of him.”

But she couldn’t think of that.

And just as she moved to attack…

The man grabbed her saber by its glowing blade and, with little more than a gentle push, extinguished the weapon with his bare hand. Rey’s anger quickly melted away, replaced by more fear, more bewilderment. A part of her instinctively reached out towards the bond, towards Kylo, asking for help, but before she could, a hand knocking her saber from her hand, sending it skidding across the stone, broke her from her own thoughts. 

Rey stepped back. “Don’t come any closer.” She flung a hand out, summoning the Force, but found her reserves strangely tapped, her own power recoiling from the mystery in front of her.

But the man wasn’t speaking anymore, and Rey felt any inhibition about him melt away, replaced by a fuzzy, numbing feeling that she recognized from once before, in a forest on Takodana.

And just before she felt her grip on consciousness slip, a single phrase from her past lifted itself up through the mire of her thoughts, brought to stunning clarity as the rest of her fell away.

_Son of Darkness._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YES, Liaison is finally off hiatus (for now)! I'm not making any more promises about when I'll be able to update next, because when I do I never seem to keep them. But I'm done with college and have made a writing schedule for myself so more frequent updates are looking more likely! Thank you so so so much if you've stayed up to date with this fic and waited patiently for this chapter (for over 5 months ahem), it seriously means so much to me to know there are people still reading this and excited for a new chapter after all these months.
> 
> If you liked this chapter, leave a comment or come say hi on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ben69solo)!! I would love to hear from you.


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